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The Great Plan 


BY 

Edith Huntington Mason 

Author of 

“The Real Agatha,” and “The Politician” 


ILLUSTRATED BY 
J. ALLEN ST. JOHN 




CHICAGO 

A. C. McCLURG & CO. 
1913 


Copyright 

A. C. McCLURG & CO. 

1913 


'1^23 

6 


Published November, 1913 


Copyrighted in Great Britain 


The Vail-Ballou Company 
Binghamton, New York, U. S. A, 

©CI.A357939 

■fW/ 


TO 

EMMA PARKS WATTS 














ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 


“I do believe they’re raising the American 

flag” Frontispiece ^ 

Canvassing for the Cause 62 

have never felt so wicked in all my life” . . .190'^ 

With the inspiration of despair she leaned down, as 

near him as she could 232 

She pointed her finger at Holyoke . ... 248 













THE GREAT PLAN 


CHAPTER I 

T a point on the Rhine some- 
where between Dollendorf and 
Coblenz, not far from the con- 
fluence of that river with the 
Neckar, stood the castle of Nie- 
denfels, the very one which Adrian Kimberley had 
selected for Emma to live in while she tried out 
the “ Great Plan.” Only the tops of its towers 
could be seen from the river, and it was this cir- 
cumstance as well as the fact that river traffic 
was less here than further up the Rhine, that made 
it Mr. Kimberley’s choice. The success of the 
“ Great Plan,” in Emma’s opinion, depended 
partly on Its freedom from Interference, and 
the less open they were to observation, the better 
she was pleased. On Its landward side the castle 
faced the beech forests of the Odenwald, across 
the little valley that lay between. Viewed from 




2 


The Great Plan 


this wooded slope the ruin stood completely re- 
vealed, springing sheer, unscreened by trees, from 
the very edge of the precipice. A road emerging 
from the forest, wound down through the valley, 
crossed a bridge and climbed up to the castle gates, 
and on the river side a footpath, hidden by bushes, 
twisted steeply to the water’s brink. 

Emma found the old place comfortable beyond 
her wildest dreams. Its bare walls and huge 
apartments were filled with rugs, tapestries, lamps, 
and deep leathern chairs, and otherwise rendered 
habitable — at least that part of it which Kim- 
berley had had restored for their use. One 
wing he had left in its ruined state, as it was not 
needed, and because Emma thought it would look 
less as if civilized beings lived in the castle. 

Everything was as well arranged. Miss Dain- 
gerfield saw to her satisfaction, as if she had 
done it herself. Kimberley had told her father 
that he would go over before the girls did and 
“ attend to all that,” if only Emma were allowed 
to have her own way in the matter of going, and 
he had kept his word well. So well indeed that 
even a scrupulous parent like Mr. Robert Dain- 
gerfield had been obliged to feel satisfied. 


The Great Plan 


3 


“ Emma is an only child and her mother and 
I have never crossed her,” he said to his friend 
Adrian. “ She says it is the wish of her heart to 
try this plan of hers, and she shall do it. For 
all me, she can have fifty castles on the Rhine or 
in Spain too for that matter, for fifty summers, 
and be as eccentric as she likes, provided that she 
does not suffer for lack of the good things of life, 
and also provided that she does n’t want me to 
leave my business and live with her.” From 
which it will be seen that the relations between 
Emma and Mr. Daingerfield were that of doting 
parent and spoiled child. Ever since her baby- 
hood, indeed, when Emma was just able to talk, 
a pet expression when she wanted her own way, 
was “ it ’s the wish of my heart ” ; and Mr. Dain- 
gerfield had never found himself willing to re- 
sist it. 

A letter of credit for an enormous sum, con- 
fided to Kimberley in trust for Emma, had made 
it possible for that experienced gentleman, who 
was as used to the good things of life as Mr. 
Daingerfield himself, to equip the old robber’s 
nest on the Rhine, which he had bought in Em- 
ma’s name, as well as any mansion in Kentucky. 


4 


The Great Plan 


“ Isn’t it just too perfect for anything, Julie? ” 
sighed the little southerner, leaning her elbow 
upon the parapet of her castle. “ I always did 
want to know what a bastion was, but I never 
thought I ’d really own one.” She looked 
proudly up from the terrace to the two stout piles 
of masonry just above them. Fortunately it was 
the kind of remark that does not need an answer, 
for Miss Simms, beautifully lining a deep basket 
chair with her youthful form, was engulfed to 
the tips of her ears in a huge and dusty book. 

Emma smiled, knowing Juliet and her passion 
for romantic literature, and turned again to the 
work of looking down over the parapet. For 
miles above and below the castle the well-culti- 
vated river banks sloped gently up to the forests 
of the Odenwald, but just here the west verge 
of the hills rose most steeply from the river 
plain, so that the spot where Niedenfels stood, 
on the high part of the shore, commanded a 
magnificent if distant view of the river valley. 
Emma gazed in thrilled silence at the staring 
white slopes opposite — all corrugated with 
green vineyards; resembling in the vertical lines 
of their cemented terraces the windings of a giant 


The Great Plan 


5 


maze, or the working plans of some monster 
building. 

This then was her Germany, the country of 
her ambition; where her use to the world was 
going to be demonstrated, her fondness for phil- 
anthropy given a fit field I That river which 
flowed so peacefully below her — through how 
many villages did It not pass that would soon be 
emancipated, enlightened, free, one sex no longer 
in subservience to another, all because an un- 
known American girl had been brave enough to 
strike masculine despotism a body-blow; had been 
capable of conceiving and executing the “ Great 
Plan!” 

“ Tell them the good news, River,” she 
thought, “ tell them, all my sisters, that hope, 
help Is coming.” And she looked down In ten- 
derness to where, far below, some women from a 
nearby village, were seining In the river. “ How 
little they know what we are going to do for 
them, how little they know! ” 

Spoke Juliet, Juliet the dreamer, Juliet the 
ardent romanticist, the loveliest bookworm that 
ever loved a story book, 

“ Emma, do listen, do, do listen.” 


6 


The Great Plan 


“ I will just this once,” said Emma with her 
all-wise, tolerant little smile, and curled herself 
up in another chair by her friend. How 
thoroughly, if she had known it, the youthfulness 
of a complexion that feared no contrast was em- 
phasized by the high linen collar she wore, how 
treacherously the plain fashion of her hair re- 
vealed instead of concealing the curl in it; and for 
a finishing touch to her chances of looking what 
she longed to be — practical, efficient and execu- 
tive — she had the tiny hands and feet of the 
southerner. Dear little Emma Daingerfieldl 
Not all her two years at college, or her tailored 
clothes, or her air of dignity could make her any- 
thing but delightfully and intensely and always 
feminine. 

“ And so the legend runs,” began Juliet, “ that 
Otho of Wittelsbach, Count Palatine of the 
Rhine, being well persuaded of his lady’s love, 
went to the wars like a soldier and a good knight, 
and on his return there was to be a wedding at 
Castle Niedenfels.” Miss Simms went on to 
read to her friend how that same good knight, 
after a year s absence in the Holy Land, was re- 
ported dead; how the lady wept and mourned 


The Great Plan 


7 


him; and, finally becoming inconsolable, took the 
veil and retired to a convent just within sight of 
the castle walls that should have welcomed her a 
bride. There she hid herself. Upon which the 
faithful knight and bold crusader came riding 
back unslain, and bidding the countryside attend 
his wedding feast, sent word to his bride to come, 
while he and his knights made ready to hold high 
wassail in Niedenfels. But the evening was far 
gone, and the feasting near its end, before the 
messengers returned bringing word that she had 
but little while before become the bride of 
Heaven, and for what reason. 

The story then went on about how the merry- 
making was suddenly turned to mourning, and 
how the good knight Otho, Count Palatine, 
stricken with grief “ Dwelt long in melancholy 
dole, and died unwed; but while he lived ever and 
always of a night he placed a light in that one 
of the tower windows in his castle which over- 
looked the convent, and ever and always in her 
window in the convent his love did put an answer- 
ing beacon. And so they loved,” finished the 
romantic tale, “ these two, and until they died 
did burn the lights to show their constancy.” 


8 


The Great Plan 


“ Is n’t that be-ri/-tiful? ” sighed Juliet, laying 
the volume down reluctantly. 

“ Why, yes, sort of. What ’s the book? ” 

** Rhine Legends, and it goes on to say, Emma, 
that the castle ’s haunted, and that sometimes in 
the banqueting hall the spirits of those old crusa- 
ders come back to feast and carouse as they used 
to do.” 

“ I don’t believe it,” — uncompromisingly. 

“ Don’t you? Well, I suppose I don’t, either, 
but it says that while no one has caught the ghosts 
banqueting for years and years, a light has been 
seen on occasion in one of the tower windows.” 

“ Tramps, probably.” 

“ Oh, Emma I ” reproachfully, “ you never be- 
lieve anything! Just think, how beautiful that 
the lamp of his love should still shine, even after 
death. Oh, I wish we could see it!” Juliet 
thrilled deliciously. 

“Heavens! I don’t!” said skeptical Emma, 
with an unskeptical shudder. Then she yawned 
and brought her little white teeth together with 
a click in a way she had. On account of this trick, 
some awfully nice fellows down in Kentucky, who 
had known her all her life, and thought the world 


The Great Plan 


9 


of her, for a pet name called her the “ Baby 
Savage.” 

It had been invented by one of them, Graham 
Horde, who had perhaps known her — and that 
is the same as saying been in love with her — the 
longest. Very wonderful things had been accom- 
plished by this young man because of his love for 
Emma. He had given up fox-hunting and idling 
with other blue-blooded but penniless youths in 
his home town, and had gone to New York where 
he had been enrolled on the editorial staff of one 
of its greatest dailies; only as reporter, to be 
sure, but then it was hardly a year since love had 
made a man of him. 

Emma was thinking of him now as she lay in 
her chair and stared at the peaceful German sky 
and the ravens that cawed about her castle’s top- 
most tower. She was twenty-three, and imagined 
she had no illusions about life, and with a certain 
amount of superiority left romance and all that 
sort of thing to twenty-year-old Juliet; yet if any- 
one had asked her, she could not have denied that 
it gave her pleasure to lie there and think about 
that tall fellow with the fair hair whom she had 
last seen on the dock at Hoboken, who had 


10 


The Great Plan 


wanted her to marry him, it seemed to her, ever 
since she could remember. 

What fun it had been that last day In New 
York before they sailed! She and Juliet and 
an aunt of Juliet’s — Miss SImm’s parents were 
not living — had been staying over night at the 
Belmont, and she well remembered the joy with 
which she beheld Graham waiting In the lobby 
when they arrived at the hotel. Contrary to all 
precedent In the matter of chaperones, they had 
then proceeded to have lunch together at a funny 
little restaurant on Forty-second street, which 
Horde had told her In his most serious manner 
was “ the favorite haunt of a lot of famous re- 
porters.” 

New York was more or less unfamiliar to 
Emma, her knowledge of It being limited to oc- 
casional stops at the Holland House when her 
father and mother were taking her to or from 
Vassar, and she smiled to herself as she recalled 
her delight when Horde had told her, laughing 
boyishly, that they were going to “ do the town.” 

Graham had, by the way, the most Infectious 
laugh you can Imagine. It did n’t matter whether 
you heard what he said or not ; when he laughed 


The Great Plan 


11 


you laughed too. He would screw up his hand- 
some nose and screw up his handsome eyes and 
giggle exactly like a girl, except that it was a deep 
bass giggle. There never was a more character- 
istic individual laugh in the world, and many 
women, beginning with his mother — long since 
dead — had loved him for it. When you heard 
it you forgot that he was impatient of criticism, 
and quick to fancy himself ill-used; you remem- 
bered only that his was a nature the real sweetness 
of which life’s harshest moments could never sour; 
whose generosity to others kept him proportion- 
ately poor, and whose dependence upon the affec- 
tion of his fellows made him beloved of them be- 
yond what is usual among men. 

How childishly they had behaved that day, 
to be sure, Emma reflected, eating peanuts and 
laughing and running at top speed halfway across 
Brooklyn Bridge I Heedless of all the serious, 
dreary workers that plodded by them, they had 
hung upon the railing to watch the great ships go 
down to the sea, until the policeman had begun 
to suspect them of a “ suicide compact,” or so 
Graham had said, and they were obliged to move 
on. 


12 


The Great Plan 


Then the hours in the Metropolitan and the 
Natural History Museum had been such fun — 
with Graham more fun than any gallery or 
museum she had ever seen anywhere in Europe. 
And she had been glad when he told her that he 
felt the same emotion she did whenever he saw 
in the City Hall Park the statue of that young 
martyred patriot, Nathan Hale. 

“ It does n’t make you feel badly at all,” Emma 
had accused him, very busy with her handkerchief, 
and he had said, “ Yes, it does; I have n’t tears in 
my eyes as you have, but they ’re in my heart just 
the same.” And Emma had thought it a wonder- 
ful thing to say ! Really it was a pity, when they 
agreed so well otherwise, that Graham should 
prove so bigoted on the subject of woman suf- 
frage. He was very sweet about it and they al- 
ways argued in a perfectly friendly way, but he 
could never be brought to admit that there was 
any need for women to have the vote, or that 
there was either sense or possibility of success in 
Emma’s scheme for obtaining it in Germany. 

Of course she could n’t think of marrying in any 
case while the Great Plan was yet in the first 
stages of its launching ; in fact, she did n’t know 


The Great Plan 


13 


that she would ever marry at all — her mission 
in life might prove too absorbing — but the par- 
ticular thing that inspired her consistent refusal 
of Mr. Horde was his skeptical attitude toward 
the expressed wish of her heart. She thought it 
was such a great Idea, this scheme of hers, and she 
felt so pleased with herself for Inventing It, that 
she could n’t but feel disappointed not to have 
sympathy and praise from the man she — well, 
from the man she “ liked very much I ” Yes, cer- 
tainly, that was the phrase, the man she “ liked 
very much.” At this point In her cogitations she 
looked over at Juliet as if half afraid that 
romanticist would suspect the tenor of her 
thoughts, which would never do I Juliet was a 
darling little thing but she was certainly romantic. 
Young girls often were so, and she, Emma, having 
long ago put that foolishness behind her, must 
serve as a check and example to her friend. But 
there was nothing to fear : Miss Simms was still de- 
vouring Rhine Legends with much the same avidity 
that Emma would have devoured chocolate cara- 
mels. 

Graham’s hostility toward the Great Plan was 
the more disappointing, thought Emma, resuming 


H 


The Great Plan 


her meditations, because it had developed so soon 
after her attempt to win approval for it from the 
Vassar Girls’ Suffrage Club, of which she had 
been president Emma had yearned for some 
great mission in life since babyhood, her mother 
said, and had played philanthropist to many a 
little darkey child out of her own allowance. 
Now, after a winter at a German boarding school, 
as a finish to her two years at Vassar, she had 
found it — had discovered what her life’s work 
was to be — the liberation of oppressed German 
womanhood ! 

But to her surprise and chagrin, upon her re- 
turn to America, and during the visit she made 
to her old classmates who were still at college, she 
found, when she had unfolded to some sixty 
members of the Vassar Girls’ Suffrage Club, her 
scheme for raising their German sisters from their 
present low estate as inferior beings to man, that 
it was received with skepticism and laughter. 
Only six volunteers for lieutenancies under her 
banner, in the proposed adventurous and experi- 
mental campaign for obtaining votes for women 
in Germany, were recruited. This was a great 
shock to Emma, for she was used to leadership 


The Great Plan 


15 


among her mates, and her suggestions hitherto 
had been listened to with respect and considera- 
tion. Miss Daingerfield was descended from the 
greatest aristocracy of blood which this free and 
democratic country has ever boasted: that of the 
South before the war, and her father’s wealth 
had further served to foster her pride of birth 
so that in a perfectly innocent way, which in her 
was not at all unattractive, she was something of 
an autocrat. In spite of the shock of it, the op- 
position had had the effect of strengthening her 
determination to carry out her scheme. “ I just 
wouldn’t let them laugh me out of it!” Emma 
said to herself with pride. But further cogita- 
tion on the subject was prevented by a cry from 
Juliet. 

“Oh, Emma, do look!” she cried, jumping 
from her chair and pointing out across the river, 
“ see over there on that castle, I do believe they ’re 
raising the American flag I ” Emma looked and 
rose hastily. 

On the opposite side of the river halfway up 
the vine-clad cliff another relic of medieval days 
perched itself, a tiny group of toy towers and 
battlements. It was too far away to discern 


i6 


The Great Plan 


human forms, but on the topmost of the three 
round towers a flagpole showed thin and straight, 
and up that pole at the present moment a flag was 
slowly crawling. The girls held their breath. 
It fluttered capriciously and then reaching the 
German flag, which, of course, already flew at the 
top, spread itself gladly to the breeze. They 
broke into cheers. Juliet was right. It was the 
star-spangled banner. 

“ I wonder who they are I ” said Juliet. 

“ Americans of course, but I do wonder what 
they want here I I hope they have n’t come to 
spy on us I ” Emma frowned anxiously. That 
was her worst fear, lest some officious, inquisitive 
American would discover her and Juliet in their 
retreat on the Rhine, hear the story of their 
schemes and ambitions, and have them written up 
in some paper at home. This idea was repugnant 
to her not only because sKe could not bear the 
thought that her offspring, her pet plan for the 
regeneration of the human race, should be held 
up to ridicule or because she dreaded the publicity 
on her own account, but because she feared that 
premature advertisement of her scheme before its 
success was assured, might result in its failure. 


The Great Plan 


17 


“ Here comes a motor boat I ” said Juliet. “ It 
put off from the landing right below the castle.” 

“ Wretched tourists, I suppose,” said Emma. 

“ Not in a motor boat,” objected the other, 
“ tourists patronize river steamers ! ” 

“ That ’s so. But whoever they are they seem 
to be aiming for Niedenfels I ” So they were, and 
presently to the great interest of the watchers on 
the terrace above, the motor boat tied up at the 
stone pier which Adrian Kimberley, among other 
“ modern improvements,” had caused to be built 
for the accommodation of Miss Daingerfield’s 
own steam launch. 

“ Why, it ’s Cousin Adrian himself I ” exclaimed 
the latter as a tall man in a checked coat stepped 
out of the launch and began the ascent of the long, 
steep flight of new stone steps that wound from 
the landing past the terrace, and joined the drive- 
way above. 

Mr. Kimberley, though he had had the parts of 
Emma’s medieval habitation, which were required 
for living purposes, thoroughly restored and had 
given every thought to the comfort of the mod- 
ernized interior, had yet been artist enough not to 
substitute an electric bell for an age-old knocker. 


i8 


The Great Plan 


and the postern gate soon resounded to its sum- 
mons. 

“Well, Emma, child, how goes it?” he ex- 
claimed when the big German woman who did 
duty as housekeeper as well as chaperone, had 
ushered him in and out upon the terrace where 
the two girls were sitting. Emma looked at him 
in amazement. 

“ Why, Cousin Adrian I ” she said, “ I thought 
you were in Paris.” 


CHAPTER II 


O distinguished was his air, so un- 
American his appearance, you felt 
that Adrian Kimberley should 
have had across his breast strings 
of glittering orders to prove him 
a foreign diplomat of note; and with a gem- 
studded robe about his shoulders and a seat on an 
elephant’s howdah, you might easily have 
imagined him the maharajah of some vast prov- 
ince in India. The golden tinge to his skin and 
the blackness of his hair, where it was still un- 
touched by gray, and his mournful eyes with their 
oriental steadfastness of gaze, at least justified the 
latter flight of fancy. But he was neither the one 
nor the other. He was just a man who had 
grown to be forty-nine years of age without un- 
derstanding that the world no longer considered 
him young, and who passed most of his time try- 
ing to invent new ways of spending his rather 
large fortune. 




20 


The Great Plan 


“ We thought you were In Paris,” the girls re- 
iterated. 

“ So I was till last night,” he said, “ then I 
thought I M run down and see how you two were 
getting on.” He shook hands warmly with Juliet. 

“ But, dear Cousin Adrian, where are you stay- 
ing? Down In the village?” She meant the 
village of Odenwald on the edge of the forest 
nearest them. His dark eyes brightened and he 
smiled a very little. 

“Where am I staying? Why, over there of 
course — ” He pointed with his cane to the castle 
across the river. “ In my house.” 

“Over there? In your house? repeated 
Emma, while Juliet opened her eyes very wide In 
her surprise. 

“ So,” he said, “ and If you ’re a good Baby 
Savage, I ’ll tell you all about It I ” 

Emma found him a cushion, Juliet pushed up a 
wIcker-chaIr, and then they forced him Into It and 
with once voice cried: “Begin!” 

“ Nothing to tell 1 ” he said, accepting the at- 
tentions of the two girls, “ except that I ’ve bought 
a Rhine castle myself, Relchenstein, the one that 
you see directly opposite, and I ’m going to spend 


The Great Plan 


21 


the summer there; nice location, I thought.” 

“ Then it was •jou who ran up the American 
flag! ” exclaimed Juliet. 

“ Ah, hum! Yes I More or less I ” said Kim- 
berley In the disjointed manner of speaking he 
sometimes employed. “ Me or mine henchman I 
I Ve got the best man to look after things for me 
you ever saw, sort of major-domo fellow, Ger- 
man, of course.” 

“ But, Cousin Adrian,” expostulated Emma — 
he was no cousin of hers, by the way, but that was 
the courteous title she had always accorded her 
father’s closest friend — ‘‘ what did you do It 
for?” 

He smiled protectingly at her. “ I promised 
your mother I would look after you,” he said; 
“ besides, I thought It would amuse me — I have 
so little to amuse me — ” here his dark face grew 
gloomier still, “ and I thought I ’d like to see how 
you two get on with your philanthropic schemes. 
By the way, you haven’t told me just what they 
are yet. All I heard from your father was that 
you had a plan for the betterment of the human 
race, Germans In particular, and he thought It 
was good for you to be allowed to work it out.” 


22 


The Great Plan 


“ Yes, mother was the one who opposed me, 
father always lets me do things if it ’s the wish of 
my heart! ’’ Although she answered him with- 
out showing it, Emma did not feel altogether 
pleased. Cousin Adrian was “ an old dear ’’ of 
course, for old he seemed to her twenty-three 
years, in spite of his slim elegance of form and 
smooth-shaven lip, but she did wish he had n’t 
taken this fancy to camp down in the castle on 
the other side of the river and “ look after her.” 

Emma didn’t want to be looked after. She 
wanted to be free to do as she liked, to come and 
go and do as she pleased without interference 
from other people. And her father had said 
she might, and it was very provoking of Cousin 
Adrian to appoint himself her guardian and coun- 
sellor-in-chief when he hadn’t been asked to do 
anything of the kind. But then he had been very 
good, working so hard to get the castle ready for 
her, so she mustn’t let him know how she felt 
about his plan to be her nearest neighbor all 
summer. 

I never thanked you for all you did to get the 
castle in order for us,” she said, smiling at him, 
it was very kind of you.” 


The Great Plan 


23 


“ Yes,” agreed Juliet, “ I hope your own castle 
is as Qomfortable.” He told them that workmen 
had been at the task of making it so for a month 
and that he flattered himself his was as tasty a 
castle as they had anywhere on the Rhine. 

“ The robber barons would n’t know Reichen- 
stein if they could see it now I ” he said. “ But 
go on, tell me about your schemes; what exactly 
is the Great Plan, that I ’ve heard so much 
about? ” Emma’s eyes sparkled in an instant; 
she came and sat on a little footstool at Kimber- 
ley’s feet and looked eagerly up at him. 

“It’s the greatest thing in the world I” she 
said, and, “ The greatest thing in the world,” re- 
peated Juliet the echo. 

“No doubt I No doubt I” said the man, sip- 
ping the color and brightness of their young en- 
thusiasm as easefully as if it were a long, cool 
drink, “ but that is n’t telling what it is? ” 

“ It ’s hard to begin,” said Emma, “ but to give 
you the idea, just generally speaking, it ’s a scheme 
for emancipating the German women from their 
state of subjection to men — by means of the 
vote.” 

“ Oh ! Ah ! I see. The suffrage question,” 


24 


The Great Plan 


“ Yes,” said Emma, ‘‘ we think that by getting 
them the vote we can free them, as any amount 
of higher education and women’s clubs can never 
do, from the wretched state of thraldom they are 
in to their men-kind. A German wife does n’t 
dare call her soul her own.” 

“ How do you know? ” 

“ I ’ve spent a whole winter at a German board- 
ing school, and traveled through the country with 
my father. Besides, it ’s a matter of common 
knowledge among people of intelligence.” 

“ Pardon me,” said Adrian gravely, but there 
was a glint in his black eyes that was anything but 
grave. 

“ I once saw a German woman in a street car,” 
continued Emma, driving her point home, “ get 
up and give her seat to a man! ” 

“ And I saw a woman stop in the middle of the 
street and tie her husband’s boot! ” added Juliet. 
Both girls looked deeply shocked. 

“ Maybe,” he said, “ but admitting that you ’re 
right about the existence of the condition and that 
the vote is the only remedy, how do you propose 
to get it, if I may ask? ” 

“ That ’s the Great Plan,” she said, sparkling 


The Great Plan 


25 


at him, ** that ’s why we ’re living in this funny 
old castle that you ’ve worked so hard to put 
in order for us.” Adrian made a pretense of put- 
ting his hand to his forehead as if losing his wits. 
“ Tell me what it is at once if you would save 
my reason,” he said. 

Emma laughed, but sobered Instantly. “ You 
must be serious about It, Cousin Adrian, you know, 
or I can’t tell you. It ’s dreadfully serious.” He 
protested that he would never laugh again If she 
would only go ahead and tell him “ like a good 
child.” 

“ Well, you see,” said Emma, bending forward 
on the footstool, while Juliet similarly seated did 
the same, “ our plan is to get the German govern- 
ment to permit women to be represented In the 
Reichstag on the same terms as men, by threaten- 
ing it with the emigration of all the unmarried 
women in the kingdom I ” 

“ The emigration of all the unmarried women 
In the kingdom? ” repeated Kimberley stupefiedly. 
“ Great heavens I What words are these? ” 

Emma nodded. “ Yes,” she said, “ it sounds 
awfully mean but It ’s the only thing in my opinion 
that will bring the Kaiser to his senses. You see,” 


26 


The Great Plan 


she went on confidently, “ the men won’t like 
having to go to other countries for their wives, 
and if the women keep the thing up long enough, 
the government will give them the vote to make 
them stop leaving the country.” Kimberley 
stared at her a moment as if she had lost her wits 
and then broke into prolonged laughter. 

“ Upon my word I ” he said. 

“ Well,” said Emma sharply, “ what ’s the 
matter with that? Don’t you think it will give 
the men a scare when they hear that all the mar- 
riageable women in the country are leaving to find 
husbands in other lands ? And you should n’t 
laugh. Cousin Adrian; you promised you would 
be serious.” 

“ But I can’t be, you can’t expect me to be, 
about such a preposterous idea as that,” he ex- 
postulated. “ Why, Emma, dear little cousin 
Emma, it ’s impossible, don’t you see it is? ” 

“ No it is n’t,” she said calmly, “ on the con- 
trary, it is working splendidly this very moment.” 

He looked, taken aback. “ You don’t mean to 
tell me that it’s actually in operation, this wild 
scheme? ” 

“Yes. No women have actually emigrated 


The Great Plan 


27 


yet, we Ve only been here a few weeks, but we Ve 
obtained promises that they will — from hundreds 
of them.” 

“But, good Heavens I how?” 

“ Why,” said Emma, “ it ’s very simple,” here 
she visibly swelled with pride, “ that ’s part of the 
Great Plan. Both Juliet and I speak German, 
and we go about among the peasant women and 
villagers and stir them up about their wrongs — ” 

“ Labor agitators, as I live,” murmured Adrian 
parenthetically. 

“ — and persuade them to emigrate,” finished 
Emma. 

“To leave Germany?” 

“ Yes, to leave a country that holds for them 
nothing but oppression and domestic servitude.” 

“ And do they listen? ” 

“Do they? You just should see them! We 
tell them that in Canada and the United States 
they ’ll find better husbands, that won’t treat them 
like servants, and they can’t wait to leave! ” 

He looked amused. “ Even so,” he said, “ I 
should hardly think you ’d cover a great deal of 
ground, just you two ! ” 

“ But there are more of us, you see,” she ex- 


28 


The Great Plan 


plained. “We have established stations in dif- 
ferent parts of the country, about half a dozen of 
them, with lieutenants in command whose duty it is 
to disaffect the women in their district and per- 
suade them to leave the country. Our recruits are 
forming new stations all the time. This castle is 
headquarters and I ’m president and Juliet is sec- 
retary. Of course we take care of the Rhine dis- 
trict, too. And so the gospel of leaving what you 
don’t like spreads from farm to farm and village 
to village.” 

“ But why only the country people ? Why 
don’t you go to cities, too ? ” 

“We ’re beginning with them first because we 
can get the movement under way more unobtru- 
sively, and then too they are most of them in 
a greater state of subjection to men. Why the 
women even plow in the fields I ” 

“ But look here, that ’s all very well,” said Kim- 
berley, betrayed for the moment into arguing seri- 
ously, “ but what are you going to do about the 
financial side of the business? You can’t expect 
people to pull up stakes and leave the country 
without involving a great deal of expense : how do 
your converts afford it? ” 


The Great Plan 


29 


“ How do all the servant girls who emigrate 
afford it? ” replied Emma briskly. ‘‘ Besides, the 
union helps about that, a lot. Any strike in the 
world, and this movement of ours Is nothing else, 
meets that difficulty, and it meets It by organizing. 
And we have done the same. We Ve formed 
those interested In the plan Into a union which 
arranges about transportation and reduces the cost 
of It to the smallest possible figure. Oh, it ’s all 
on a business basis, I assure you ! ” 

“You don’t mean it! ” gasped Adrian with a 
look of unwilling admiration for the administra- 
tive talent of Miss Daingerfield which, however 
misapplied he might consider It, seemed to him in 
one so young to amount almost to genius. 

But presently he rose and began to walk up and 
down the terrace before the two girls and his ex- 
pression all at once became serious enough even 
to satisfy Emma. 

“ The idea I ” he said, coming to a sudden halt 
before them, “ the very Idea of your setting your- 
selves up, you two young girls — against the most 
autocratic and bureaucratic government In the 
world I The next thing you know you ’ll have the 
German police down on you : I suppose you had n’t 


30 


The Great Plan 


thought that your plan might be against the laws 
of the country? ” 

“ No, we had n’t, but we don’t care If it Is. 
We ’re American citizens and these old Germans 
can’t touch us. Besides,” Miss Dalngerfield 
added hurriedly with feminine lack of logic, 
“ they ’ll never know a thing about it; we ’re keep- 
ing our part In the plan secret ! That ’s why we 
came here to live in this old castle away from 
everybody! ” 

Adrian smiled, but It was a defeated smile. 
“ Well,” he said, suddenly remembering with ad- 
miration that father’s wisdom which had permitted 
Emma to work out her wild scheme without even 
attempting to argue, “ I see It ’s no use trying to 
persuade you to give It up — but just to think of 
It I ” here he shook his head whimsically, “ that 
my little cousin, pride of Kentucky’s hunting fields, 
and belle of I don’t know how many ballrooms 
should have turned suffragette I ” 

Whether this speech was pleasing to Emma or 
not Kimberley had no chance to discover, for at 
that moment the housekeeper, Frau Tilly Bloem, 
who with her fifteen-year-old daughter, made up 
the entire Indoor staff of the castle help, appeared 


The Great Plan 


31 


upon the terrace and announced a visitor to see 
“ Fraulein Emma.” 

“ Who is it? ” inquired Emma. 

“ Frau von Eberhart, her name she said it was,” 
replied Tilly. 

“ I never heard the name before,” said Emma, 

but show her up, Tilly, please; I ’ll see her out 
here.” 

The Frau von Eberhart proved to be a tall, 
awkward type of woman much swathed in volumi- 
nous black wraps. It was hard to tell what her 
face looked like because her veil and bonnet al- 
most completely concealed it. 

“ It ’s a great pleasure for me to meet you. Miss 
Daingerfield,” she said in a low, deep voice, when 
the introductions had been made and she had been 
seated. “ I am so much interested in this new 
movement of yours to obtain the emancipation of 
my countrywomen.” This address, as you may 
imagine, captured Emma’s fancy at once and a 
little more conversation finished the matter. The 
Frau von Eberhart, it appeared, had a brute of a 
husband. She recounted her wrongs so movingly, 
indeed, that Emma felt compelled to give way to 
her sense of humor. 


32 


The Great Plan 


“ You want a divorce, not the vote I fear,” she 
said smilingly. But the visitor was quite sure it 
was the vote. “ Then and not until then,” she 
said, “ shall I be on an equal footing and able 
to deal with him.” And she went on to tell how 
she had recently come into the possession of a vast 
fortune and that she wanted to devote it and her- 
self to the furthering of the cause, or, in other 
words, the Great Plan. Emma could hardly 
suppress her joy when she heard this. She threw 
Juliet a glance of ecstasy. Here was a valuable 
ally indeed, a woman of wealth who was being 
abused by her husband I What a splendid lieu- 
tenant she would make I 

“ I shall be only too delighted to accept your 
aid,” she assured her caller after a few moments 
more talk. “ I need a station in your part of the 
country. I will make you out papers at once in- 
stalling you in a lieutenancy, if you will come to 
the office.” 

“ The Fraulein is very kind,” said the newly- 
made officer, rising as Emma did. 

“ I will show you over the castle afterward,” 
Miss Daingerfield went on, “ this is our headquar- 
ters, you know, and I want you to see just how 


The Great Plan 


33 


Miss Simms and I run things so that you can model 
your own station on the same plan. Come Juliet. 
Cousin Adrian, you will excuse us?” Kimberley 
told them that he had intended for some time to 
return to his own castle, bade them adieu and went 
off whistling down the steep descent to the landing. 

Frau von Eberhart proved a delightful visitor 
to show over the castle, she was so enthusiastic 
about everything. The two girls had quite a time 
getting her out of the office, once they arrived 
there. She wanted to finger and touch all that she 
saw. The typewriter interested her immensely — 
especially when she heard that clever little 
Juliet had learned to run it herself so as to have no 
outsiders in on the secrets of the Great Plan — 
Emma’s big mahogany desk covered with letter 
files and account books apparently filled her with 
excitement, while the maps on the walls showing 
the exact location of each station so engrossed her 
attention that they could hardly induce her to 
leave. Juliet was a little indignant; thought the 
lady was too free with her hands, and altogether 
too curious. 

“ She does n’t have to sit down and read that 
report of Lieutenant Dolly Price’s all through,” 


34 


The Great Plan 


she whispered while the subject of her criticism was 
engaged in perusing the letter. 

“ I don’t object,” Emma whispered back, “ it 
shows such enthusiasm and interest. She wants 
to see what Miss Price has been doing and how 
to report : it ’s her anxiety to learn how to con- 
duct her own station that makes her act that way.” 

Nevertheless Juliet remained indignant for it 
was the same thing over again downstairs. The 
visitor exclaimed over everything : the stained glass 
in the castle library, or Alte Bau, as it was called, 
the grand piano in the Konigs-Saal — that room 
which in medieval days was reserved for the use of 
the women of the house — and the comfort and 
luxury that was everywhere in such sharp contrast 
to the bleak twelfth century aspect of the exterior. 

“ Ach I ” she exclaimed in her deep voice, 
“ What a sight for those old Palatine princes and 
robber barons that used to live here if they could 
return and see the castle now ! ” 

“ Yes,” said Emma, “ velvet underfoot where 
there were rushes and cold stone floors, divans and 
chairs where there were stools and benches, stu- 
dent lamps and electric lights where there were 
pine torches — I just think it would surprise 


The Great Plan 


35 


them I ” She looked around at the walls covered 
with medieval paintings, and the deep window 
embrasures, twelve feet thick some of them, and 
glowed with pride. Yes, it was a nice castle, and 
her very own. 

“ The architect wanted to cut down the size of 
some of the chimney places but Miss Daingerfield 
would n’t let him,” said Juliet when they came to 
the kitchen, “ however we did have to let him put 
in a modern cooking stove here. We simply 
could n’t roast an ox whole every time we wanted 
to dine, could we, Tilly? ” Tilly and her daugh- 
ter Greta, who were observing the visitor’s interest 
in the new range with stolid pleasure, smiled and 
shook their trim heads. “ Achl Nein,” they said. 

The tour of inspection was ended at last and 
Emma and Juliet and the Frau von Eberhart 
stopped in the Schlosshof, or castle yard, a moment 
while Emma finished giving her the last details of 
the secrets of the Great Plan and instructing her 
in her duties as lieutenant. 

Tilly and Heinrich, an old man who did the 
garden and rough work of the castle, were stand- 
ing at the gate ready to let down the ancient port- 
cullis which had been put in perfect working order 


36 The Great Plan 

and was by Emma’s commands always kept raised. 

** You have treated me very handsomely,” said 
Frau von Eberhart in her wonderfully good Eng- 
lish, the German flavor of which was so little 
apparent, “ I shall begin operations in my district 
at once. Good-by.” From her method of ex- 
pressing herself it might have been a New York 
precinct captain talking to his political superior 
instead of woman to woman. 

A sensation that something queer had happened 
or was about to happen came over Emma as the 
Frau von Eberhart turned to cross the courtyard. 
She saw the smiling faces of Tilly and old Hein- 
rich, the brackish water in the moat reflecting the 
afternoon sun, the ravens cawing about the top- 
most tower of Niedenfels, as if in a dream. It 
was with an effort that she called after her visitor: 

Remember, you ’re under a vow of secrecy, not 
a word of the Great Plan to outsiders — ” 

Arc you surprised or are you not to hear that at 
this point the supposed German frau threw back 
her head, so that her bonnet and veil fell to one 
side, screwed up her handsome eyes, screwed up 
her handsome nose and giggled like a girl? Only 
it was a deep, bass giggle. Emma laid her hand 


The Great Plan 


37 


on her side, and Juliet who was standing by her 
saw her turn pale, and then as if impelled by that 
clutch at her heart the red blood came leaping to 
her face. 

“ Graham ! ” she cried, “ Graham Horde 1 ” 


CHAPTER III 


HE sound of his name, which 
made it clear that his identity was 
discovered, caused the young 
reporter, for he It was, to become 
suddenly serious. Had his fatal 
sense of humor betrayed him Into the hands 
of the enemy just as he had been on the point of 
escaping with the material for the Sunday paper 
“ story ’’ he had come all the way to Germany to 
get? It looked like it, unless flight could save 
him. Acting on the thought, he gathered up, into 
a firm masculine clutch, the voluminous black 
skirts which had so well disguised him as Frau von 
Eberhart, disclosing thereby a pair of blue trous- 
ered legs, gray silk ankles, and heavy shoes, and 
sprinted for the gate. 

But Emma was too quick for him. Though 
wounded to the heart by the treachery of her well- 
beloved — the object of which was only too plain 
to one who knew his ardor for his profession — 
she had her faculties all about her. 

38 



The Great Plan 


39 


“ Up drawbridge ! Down with the port- 
cullis I ” she shouted and was Instantly obeyed. 
Without even looking around, so excellent was the 
discipline maintained, Tilly and old Heinrich 
loosened the chains and pulleys and tightened 
levers and the drawbridge slowly reared itself to 
the height of the gate towers. At the same time 
the fifteenth century portcullis as capable now of 
keeping people out who wanted to get In, and of 
keeping people In who wanted to get out as It had 
been then, with well-oiled smoothness slid down 
Into place. 

Exactly one second later, Mr. Graham Horde, 
special reporter for the New York Globe, arrived 
breathless with running In unaccustomed skirts, 
and flung himself against Its Iron side. It was not 
very difficult after that for Heinrich, ably assisted 
by the stout Tilly, to seize the young man, encum- 
bered as he was by his feminine attire, and bind 
his arms behind his back with his own belt. Just 
as this task had been completed Emma and Juliet 
came running up. 

“ Graham, how could you ! ” gasped Miss Daln- 
gerfield. 

Juliet opened her brown eyes very wide, 


40 


The Great Plan 


“ Then you know him ! ’’ she said to her friend. 

“ Rather I ” volunteered the captive, grinning. 

‘‘ Only too well I ” said the captor sternly. “ So 
well indeed that it is n’t difficult for me to divine 
your object in entering my house in this ridiculous 
disguise and prying into my secrets.” 

“ Well, you know I ’m a reporter,” muttered 
the prisoner, digging at the red flagstones under 
his feet like a little boy caught in a scrape. 

“ Meaning, I suppose, that it ’s your business to 
pry?” 

“ Exactly ! ” replied Horde, looking up eagerly 
to see if there were hope of clemency, “ you see 
I ’ve been promoted to special reporter for Sunday- 
page work; they liked my idea of writing up you 
girls and your plan and — ” 

Emma stopped him with a terrible glance. 
“ Never mind about that now,” she said, “ as I was 
going to say when you interrupted me, however 
that may be about prying being a reporter’s busi- 
ness, it is n’t your business to pry into the secrets 
of your friends, and it is n’t the part of an honor- 
able man to make capital out of them ! ” This 
was pretty severe and Horde hastened to defend 
himself. 


The Great Plan 


41 


“ I could n’t help it, Savage I ” he said eagerly. 
“ The minute I told them about it they said it was 
a great idea, and sent me over after you on the 
next ship ; and I knew I could n’t get in any other 
way, so I disguised myself.” 

“ I should think you did,” interrupted Emma, 
with a scornful glance at his skirts. Horde looked 
down at them and then grew slowly red. 

“ I did n’t like it much,” he murmured, then 
went on hurriedly and pleadingly: “You see 
it would have made a bully story. I can just 
see the headlines : ‘ Two young society girls 
in strange venture. Southern heiress invents 
novel method for advancing cause of suffrage’; 
or, perhaps, ‘ Feminine philanthropist seeks fran- 
chise for German sisters ’ ; or else, ‘ Rhine castle 
turned into headquarters for suffrage movement by 
fanciful freak of young millionairess,’ or else — ” 
“ Stop I ” commanded Emma, her face rosy with 
wrath at the nonchalance with which the prisoner 
rattled off those fantastic headlines that were so 
distasteful to her; then, turning to Heinrich, “ take 
him to the lowest dungeon in the castle,” she said, 
“ and keep him there till I tell you what to do with 


42 


The Great Plan 


“ Achscuse me, Fraulein Emma,” said Heinrich, 
bowing respectfully while he wound his arm more 
closely in the young man’s, “ there iss but von 
dungeon in ter castle and it is not fit for dogs! 
Fraulein knows it is a room which Mr. Kimberley 
he have not had done over I ” Here the prisoner 
saw fit to indulge his reckless sense of humor 
again and laughed aloud. The idea of “ doing- 
over ” a dungeon amused him. Now it is not 
quite certain that Emma, when she threatened him 
with a dungeon, had meant to carry out her threat. 
Any room in that castle of barred windows and 
thick walls would have imprisoned him success- 
fully. Perhaps she only meant then, to scare him, 
and certainly it was delicious to feel that she did 
in fact own a real live dungeon to threaten with ! 
But that fatal laugh of Horde’s stirred her to a 
decision. 

“What does that matter?” she inquired of 
Heinrich sharply. “ Mr. Horde is not a guest, he 
is a prisoner. Take him at once to the dungeon 1 ” 
She waved her hand imperiously toward the ban- 
queting hall on the other side of the Schlosshof, 
deep below which was the place in question. And 
this though she had herself seen the dungeon on 


The Great Plan 


43 


her first visit to the castle and knew it for a horrid 
black shuddery hole with shiny walls. Oh, Em- 
ma I That Dalngerfield temper, slow to arouse 
but deadly when once under way, was no inherit- 
ance for a girl I Without another word Heinrich 
led the young man away. 

“ I think it ’s too exciting for anything,” said 
Juliet that night coming into Emma’s room, 
“ who ’d ever think we ’d have a prisoner for our 
dungeon I ” Not being a romanticist and having 
an interest in the said prisoner which Juliet was 
yet far from suspecting, Emma did not look at the 
matter quite in that light. 

“ I don’t think it ’s exciting a bit,” she replied, 
“ I think it ’s just a shame.” 

“ But Emma,” gabbled the heedless Juliet, “ you 
don’t seem to consider, it ’s an adventure, and you 
know we were just looking for adventures the 
other day ! ” 

You were. Miss Simms, I was n’t! ” corrected 
Emma tartly. 

Juliet laughed. Emma’s southern way of mak- 
ing the “ s ” in “ Miss ” and “ Mrs.” sound like 
“ z,” always amused her. “ Don’t be cross,” she 
said. “ You know you ’re as pleased about it as 


44 


The Great Plan 


I am! Wasn’t it fine when he tried to escape? 
It was as good as a scene out of Marmion! 

‘‘ Lord Marmion turned,” she began in a de- 
clamatory manner, 

“ — well was his need, 

And dash’d the rowels in his steed, 

Like arrow through the archway sprung; 

The ponderous grate behind him rung: 

To pass there was such scanty room, 

The bars descending, grazed his plume. 

Oh, I loved it I ” She clasped her hands in 
rapture and looked ardently toward Emma for 
sympathy. 

Emma was at that moment climbing into the 
little brass bed which a fond and foolish father 
had shipped to her from home because she said 
she couldn’t sleep as well in any other, and she 
waited until she had settled herself on her pillows 
before she spoke. Her hair was strained back 
from her forehead to keep it out of her eyes so 
that the braids stuck out at right angles, and this 
effect, combined with a big bow of blue ribbon on 
the top of her head, and her neat suit of pale blue 
pajamas, gave her the appearance of a little girl 
of twelve. But there was nothing childlike about 
her expression. She looked severely at Juliet. 


The Great Plan 


45 


“ Don’t be foolish. Marmion indeed! ” she said. 
But Juliet did n’t hear. She was off again. 

“ ‘ The castled crag of Drachenfels,’ ” she 
spouted at the top of her sweet young voice, 

“Frowns o’er the wide and winding Rhine, 

Whose breast of waters broadly swells 
Between the banks which bear the vine 
And hills all rich with blossomed trees, 

And fields which promise corn and wine. 

And scattered cities crowning these 
Whose far white walls along them shine 
Have strewed a scene which I should see 
With double joy were thou with me!” 

The Baby Savage clicked her teeth together and 
flounced over in bed. ‘‘ If you don’t stop, Juliet,” 
she said in a high unnatural tone, “ I ’ll cry! ” 

Juliet stopped in the middle of a second verse 
of Childe Harold and looked at her in amazement. 
“ Of course I ’ll stop if you really want me to,” 
she said, “ I did n’t know you felt like that, old 
chap,” and went out of the room. 

The door had hardly closed upon her when 
Emma burst into tears. 

It was a horrid night. She hardly slept at all. 
First a mouse scrambling in the chimney-place 
woke her, then the sound of the wind that fled 
'down the Rhine valley, tapping at her window as 


46 


The Great Plan 


it passed. At least these were the things which, 
Emma told herself, kept her awake. In reality it 
was her remorse for commanding Graham to the 
dungeon. Of course her brain could find nothing 
else for itself to do than picture him spending the 
night with his feet in a pool of water all by him- 
self down in a deep, dark dungeon. 

The mouse in the chimney-place squeaked and 
scrambled some more. A terrible thought struck 
Emma — perhaps there were mice, no, rats I down 
there in Graham’s dungeon ! That was too 
much. It was three o’clock in the morning, but 
undeterred by that fact, she put on her stockings 
and slippers, wrapped herself and her pajamas in 
a big white coat and taking a candle (there were no 
electric lights in that room far below the castle 
where Graham was), drew back the bolt of the 
thick beechen door and slipped out into the hall, 
dungeon-bound. And when I tell you that anxiety 
for the safety of her lover made her forget her 
vanity and her tightly braided hair, the cold cream 
on her little face, and her unconventional attire, 
you may guess whether it was real or not I 

Down the rough stairs of crumbling tufa, cov- 
ered at Adrian Kimberley’s direction by a strip of 


The Great Plan 


47 


gray velvet carpet, tripped Emma, candle held 
high, her blue eyes peering awesomely into the 
great rooms below. Through the Alte Bau she 
went, where the busts of former Wittelsbachs, 
counts of the palatine, gleamed palely at her 
in the darkness; through the gloomy and 
deserted Bandhaus; down wide halls, tapestry 
hung, where military relics of feudal days 
threatened her from the walls ; down the 
great stairway lined with allegorical statues, that 
led to the entrance hall, and at last out into 
the Schlosshof. For she had to cross the Schloss- 
hof, this brave Emma, in order to reach her goal 
— the building called the Otho’s Bau, which Kim- 
berley had not had restored for her use, and which 
contained the banqueting hall. Beneath this scene 
of oldtime revelry was the dungeon where poor 
Graham was confined. It seemed almost as if 
the thought that a fellow-being was languishing in 
a pestilence-breeding hole, some hundreds of feet 
below them, had added to the pleasure of those 
same ancient revelers. 

Emma was most awfully afraid to do what she 
was doing — cross the great hall with its gorgeous 
rafters all bedecked with the arms of the house of 


48 


The Great Plan 


Wittelsbach, descend three flights of narrow wind- 
ing stairs and patter through three long vaulted 
casemated passages with a candle for her only 
light. On every stair she heard a footfall behind 
her, through every passage the ghosts of fierce be- 
whiskered robber barons pursued her, and the wind 
from unseen open places blew chillily round her 
ankles. But the thought of what Graham’s suf- 
fering must be if the mere getting to the dungeon 
so dismayed her, stayed and supported her till at 
last she reached the big square room where the pit 
in the earth, more properly called a dungeon, was 
located. Raising the candle she saw its black 
open mouth gaping at her from the middle of the 
floor of tufa stone. Trembling, she pattered to 
its edge. 

“ Graham I ” she called. But no beloved voice 
replied^ She became aware instead of another 
noise, a strange unaccountable murmuring that at 
first she did not recognize. It seemed to come 
from the other side of the wall next to which 
wound the staircase she had just descended. She 
went and put her ear to it, and the murmuring grew 
loud and merged into a continuous rushing sound. 
Then she knew. It was the Rhine I The dis- 


The Great Plan 


49 


covery frightened her. If that was indeed the 
river, those passages and stairs had brought her 
far, much farther down into the depths of the earth 
than she had dreamed possible. She flew back to 
the edge of the pit and held her candle out over it 
and peered down. 

“ Graham I ” she called sharply. He did not 
answer. Good heavens, had the rats eaten him 
up? Had he drowned in that stagnant pool of 
water she had herself seen by daylight at the bot- 
tom of the place? Frantic in a moment, she set 
her candle by the pit’s edge and kneeling, gazed 
down into it’s forbidding depths. 

“ Darling I ” she sobbed, “ I love you I Answer 
me ! ” But no voice came up to her from the 
darkness. 

“ I love you more than anyone in the world,” 
wept Emma, giving way unrestrainedly to her 
sudden terror of the adventure and her fear for 
what Graham’s plight might be. “ And I ’m sorry 
I put you in the dungeon I Forgive me I Forgive 
me! ” This time she received an answer, but a 
queer one. 

A great yawn, the very father yawn of all yawns 
indeed, rolled itself up to her, echoing against the 


50 


The Great Plan 


sides of the pit. But the ear of love is quick, and 
Emma recognized in it Graham’s tones. Then a 
sleepy voice called out: “ Who ’s that? Got any- 
thing to eat? ” 

Infinite relief seized the girl — he was alive 
then — but at the same time, and this is consistent 
with the psychology of feminine nature, infinite 
anger seized her also. 

Had he been calmly and peacefully asleep then, 
all this time while she had been weeping over him, 
lavishing upon him her love and pity? But a 
second thought came to her in time to make her 
glad he had not heard those wild words in which 
had been a betrayal of all she felt for him. An 
alert fully awake repetition of his question 
“ Who ’s that? ” on Graham’s part extracted an 
answer from her. 

“ It ’s me, Emma,” she said ungrammatically 
and coldly, just as if it were a perfectly natural, 
ordinary thing for her to be in that dismal place 
at such an hour. Thunder-struck silence from 
Graham; then, in a moment: 

“ Well, what do you want? ” That was no way 
to reply. Emma was indignant. Here she had 
come all the way through all those fearsome pas- 


The Great Plan 


51 


sages because she was anxious about him and all 
he said was, “ What do you want? ” 

“ I came to let you out,” she said in hurt tones. 

“ Very good of you,” replied the voice of Gra- 
ham, “ but I don’t exactly see how you ’re going 
to do it. Janitor had to have a ladder to get me 
down here and I don’t know where he ’s put it.” 

Emma glanced around the four bare walls but 
saw no ladder. “I didn’t think of that; what 
shall I do?” 

“ Don’t do anything,” he said, “ I’m very com- 
fortable where I am.” This ruffled Emma. She 
considered it mere bravado, and she did n’t like 
him to take what she intended for the severest 
possible punishment, so lightly. 

“ Don’t be silly,” she said, “ you know perfectly 
well you ’re as uncomfortable as can be, up to your 
neck in water and no bed to lie on.” 

“ Wrong again,” called the prisoner gayly, 
“ there ’s straw two feet deep down here and I ’m 
lying on a nice new clean mattress, and what ’s 
more I have some cigarettes.” Emma was stupe- 
fied. 

“ But how,” she cried, how did you get all 
those things? ” 


52 


The Great Plan 


“I didn’t get them,” he replied, “that old 
Kris Kringle of yours got them for me.” 

“Heinrich?” 

“ I suppose so, if that ’s Mr. Kringle’s first 
name I ” 

“ But why,” gasped Emma, bewildered by this 
unexpected display of humanity on the part of the 
old gardener, “ why did he do it? I told him — ” 

“You told him,” interrupted Graham’s voice, 
“ to throw me into the deepest and darkest dun- 
geon there was, but you see he had a tenderer heart 
than you have, besides, — ” this with a perfectly 
horrid chuckle, “/ gave him fifty marks; that 
might have influenced him.” 

Then Emma was mad I Her servants bribed, 
her orders disobeyed, the punishment robbed of 
half its horrors I It was too much I 

I think,” she called, “ I think you ’re the very 
most disagreeable outrageous person I ever heard 
about, and I don’t care if you stay in that old 
dungeon all your life, and I ’m going away, and 
I’m never coming back again I” She snatched 
her candle and jumped to her feet. 

Now Graham was genuinely angry with her. 
He had not thought her capable of really inflicting 


The Great Plan 


'53 


upon a friend a night in that unpleasant place just 
for doing In the Interests of his profession what he 
considered was no worse than playing a practical 
joke. Emma’s own profession as suffrage pro- 
moter of course he never could take seriously. 
But however that may have been, at that moment 
he was only conscious that he did n’t want her to 
go- away. 

“ All right,” he called up to her, “ go If you 
like I You don’t care I suppose if I die down 
here, eaten alive by rats I ” 

“ Rats I ” gasped Emma, forgetting her anger 
as the original cause of her anxiety for him was 
called to her mind. “ Oh, Graham, there are n’t 
really rats, are there?” She knelt again by the 
pit’s edge. A long sigh came up to her. 

“Aren’t there though? Great big ones with 
long curly tails and wicked yellow teeth I ” An 
awe-stricken whisper floated down to him. 

“ Have they — do they — are you bitten? ” 

“ All over me,” Graham answered with cruelly 
well-simulated accents of pain. And at that 
Emma burst Into loud crying. “Rats I” she 
sobbed, “ Oh, dear, oh, dear! I wish I hadn’t 
done it! ” A sudden exclamation from below and 


54 


The Great Plan 


the sound of feet scuffling through straw came to 
her. 

“ Good God I ” said Graham’s voice, this time 
in accents of genuine distress. She stopped crying 
at once. “What is the matter?” she asked an- 
ticipating some new terror. 

“ You ’re crying,” he answered and his voice 
was so close she knew he must be standing erect 
just below her, “ and I ’m not there to comfort 
you.” This was so good to hear that Emma im- 
mediately fell to crying again. 

Graham was silent for a moment and then 
Emma heard him say in a perfectly desperate 
voice: “Look out! I’m coming up I” Then 
came the noise of running feet and a great scram- 
bling at the wall. But he could n’t do it, poor fel- 
low. Not even a first-class athlete, such as he was, 
can run up fifteen feet of stone wall without the 
aid of a rope ! He fell back with an exclamation 
that quite startled Emma. 

“ Pile the straw up and put the mattress on top,” 
she said and forgot all about crying and held the 
candle out along the edge so that he could see, 
oblivious of the fact that her costume was anything 
but conventional. 


The Great Plan 


55 


Graham looked up at her gladly and worked 
with a will, but alas! the mattress was very thin 
and refused to stand upright and when rolled and 
placed on end it only brought the poor prisoner’s 
head within three feet of the top. “ Hang it! ” 
said the young reporter miserably. In spite of 
the cold cream and the stiff pigtails, all his hope in 
life seemed centred on reaching that bright face 
above him. Emma too, curiously enough, was 
now as anxious to get her lover out of the dungeon 
as she had been to get him in. She was deeply 
disappointed in the failure of the mattress plan. 

“ I suppose we ’ll have to wait until morning 
when Heinrich comes,” she said sadly. 

“ It ’s nearly morning now,” he replied and she 
saw him light a match to look at his watch. 
“ Half-past four!” 

“ Mercy ! ” Emma said, suddenly conscious of 
her costume, “ I should think so! He ’ll be here 
any minute : I must go. But, Graham, promise 
me,” her voice grew very earnest, “ promise me if 
I let you out you won’t go back home and tell all 
about the Great Plan in your old newspaper. I 
don’t want people to know about it until it’s a 
success, and you know I hate publicity.” 


56 


The Great Plan 


“ I could n’t promise that, Baby Savage,” said 
Graham trying to soften his refusal by a pet name. 
“I’m a reporter for the Daily Globe, and they 
gave me this assignment and if I ’m free to go back 
home, I ’ll have to hand in my story, that ’s all.” 

“ And how did they come to give you this as- 
signment, pray?” questioned Emma, with a re- 
turn of her magisterial manner; “you must have 
told them about it first. They don’t know me — ” 
“ But they know of you, don’t they? You ’ve 
visited at Newport, have n’t you? And had your 
picture in Town and Country? 

“ That ’s no reason why they should know any- 
thing about my plan to advance the cause of 
woman suffrage in Germany is it? ” 

“ No,” confessed Graham, “ but you see the 
editor of the Sunday Page is a great chap and a 
friend of mine, and when I told him about it, the 
day after I ’d seen you off on the boat, just because 
I thought it would amuse him, you know, he said 
it was the best story he ’d ever heard, and if I ’d 
get the material for a write-up, he ’d pay my ex- 
penses over and give me five hundred dollars be- 
side I” 

“ So you were willing to betray my confidence. 


The Great Plan 


■57 


for you knew it was a secret, for money I ” Emma 
said as dramatically as she could and as scathingly. 

There was no answer for a moment, and then 
a subdued, husky voice said: “You make it 
sound pretty rotten but if you knew what I wanted 
the money for, perhaps you would n’t think so 
badly of me.” 

“What did you want the money for?” asked 
Emma, and, although she knew there was only 
one answer to that, it thrilled her to the soul when 
Graham whispered, “ For you.” 

“Dear Greggy! ” she murmured. It was a 
nickname she sometimes called him when she felt 
tenderest toward him. The young man sprang to 
the top of the rolled mattress: “Reach down 
your hand, Emma,” he urged, balancing himself 
incredibly; “if you do I think we could just 
touch.” Protesting but obedient Emma put down 
her candle, laid flat down on the cold stone floor, 
and reached down her little arm into the blackness 
of the dungeon. 

“ Oh, Graham, it is n’t long enough ! ” she 
complained. “ We can’t do it.” 

“Yes, we can I” said that indomitable fellow 
and straining up on tiptoe he reached with all his 


58 


The Great Plan 


might and, lo I the fingers of his right hand came 
in contact with the fingers of her left. He saw the 
gleam of his own signet ring on the middle 
knuckle, the ring she said she wore for fun be- 
cause they were “ friends.’* Yes, glory of glories, 
miracle of miracles, their hands touched, and 
even the most fortunate of lovers that moment 
had need to envy them ! 

“ Dear Greggy ! ” whispered the girl as if sud- 
denly inspired by that electric touch, “ I know 
what we’ll do! We’ll let you out of here the 
first thing in the morning, but we ’ll have a black- 
smith come and put an iron chain and ball on your 
leg; then you can’t escape, and you won’t have to 
go back and tell all my secrets to your paper. 
You can stay here with a free conscience, and we 
can have the best time in the world ! ” The 
absurd side of Emma’s novel method of solving 
both their problems did not apparently strike Gra- 
ham at all. 

“ The best time in the world I Bully for you I ” 
he echoed from the dungeon, frantically endeav- 
oring to squeeze the fingertips that he could only 
just touch. 

“Well, then, good-by I” she said, getting up. 


The Great Plan 


59 


“ Good-by, jailer I ” 

“ Good-by, prisoner ! ” She was gone. 

As Miss Daingerfield had said it would be, so 
it was. After breakfast the next morning a black- 
smith was summoned and a fine romantic rusty 
chain with ball attached was selected with great 
care by Juliet from the castle arsenal. It was 
adjusted to the released prisoner’s leg by a pad- 
lock and the key given to Emma, and only at night 
when Heinrich had safely imprisoned him in his 
room was he allowed to unlock it. 

At first Graham found the heavy thing uncom- 
fortable to wear, but it was not long before he grew 
accustomed to it. 

“ I must try to get fond of it,” he would say 
humorously, “ since we are to become such in- 
separable companions.” 

And he would hobble about with most surpris- 
ing agility, dragging the great iron ball after him 
over stone floors and rich rugs with the utmost 
gayety, or carrying it in his arms for as long as he 
could stand its weight. This he did to the never 
ending delight of Juliet and the great pride of 
Emma, who thought it had been a brilliant idea of 
hers so to arrange matters. 


CHAPTER IV 


HERE are many kinds of women 
In Germany beside what Is known 
as the “hausfrau”; women who 
practice the arts and sciences, 
women who do nothing but 
loiter In rich turnouts on the fashionable drives of 
its big cities, and those who belong to the 
immense army of wage earners. But the 
woman whose Interests In life the Kaiser has 
limited to the “ four k’s ” — Kinder, Kleider, 
Kirche and Kuche, or children, clothes, church, and 
cooking — Is the one who forms the German Ideal 
of womanhood, and It Is the busy hausfrau whom 
the world has come to accept as the true type of 
German woman. It was In her. In the hausfrau, 
therefore, because her type was In the majority, 
and because she was most tyrannized over by man- 
kind, that Emma was most Interested. 

The woman whose position In her own house- 
hold was that of an unpaid servant, who per- 
6o 




The Great Plan 


6i 


formed menial labor for the master of the house 
if she lived in a village, and labor in the fields if 
she lived on a farm ; the woman who submitted to 
a law which permitted her husband to dispose of 
her property without consulting her unless the 
contrary was stated at the time of marriage, was 
the one in whose behalf Emma’s sympathies were 
specially enlisted, and for whom she most desired 
the vote. 

Though she knew that Germany boasted a 
Feminist movement of importance which mani- 
fested itself in women’s clubs of every description, 
which were to accomplish every reform under the 
sun, and that higher education was making intel- 
lectual progress more certain, she realized that it 
was far behind the United States in respect to 
feminine emancipation, and that very litde had 
been done to obtain equal suffrage. 

This she was firmly persuaded was a neces- 
sity, and also that the thinking majority of 
women in Germany did not sufficiently understand, 
what she herself was convinced of, that domestic 
and economic liberty could only go hand in hand 
with political enfranchisement. And it was this 
political liberty that she had come to Germany to 


62 


The Great Plan 


try to give them by means of the unique scheme 
she called the ‘‘ Great Plan.” 

Emma and Juliet had done what they considered 
a good day’s work for the cause — that is to say 
they had motored over to the little village of 
Eberach, some twenty miles away from Nieden- 
fels, just as they had motored to many other vil- 
lages on other days, and thoroughly canvassed it. 
They had walked through miles of narrow streets 
lined with what Emma called “ cuckoo clock ” 
houses, as narrow as the streets themselves, with 
steep, high roofs like the steep, tall hats of the 
high cheek-boned men who owned them. They 
had crossed dozens of children-cluttered thresh- 
olds, spouted eloquent German to as many haus- 
fraus — stout apple-faced women with hard hands 
forever scouring, forever busy — chatted with 
pink-faced young women with yellow braids wound 
flatly around their heads, and full white aprons, 
had wandered through market-places noisy with 
peasants selling and buying provisions, and had 
gathered recruits everywhere, till darkness put an 
end to their labors. 

“Weren’t the babies dear?” said Juliet, as 
they returned to the inn where they had lunched 



Canvassing for the Cause 







\ 





# 





4 

K 

h 


♦ • 


c 



The Great Plan 


63 


at noon, and told the chauffeur to get the car out. 
“ I never saw so many in my life. It was hard 
not to step on them.*’ 

“ It was just a fine haul! ” said Emma, getting 
into the waiting automobile. What she meant 
was that as a result of the door-to-door canvass of 
Eberach, fifteen unmarried young women had 
given their word to leave the fatherland and emi- 
grate, persuaded thereto by the silver tongues of 
the two young enthusiasts. Miss Daingerfield and 
Miss Simms, who, forgetful of every considera- 
tion save that of accomplishing their object, had 
painted America as a sort of promised land for 
the tyrant-ridden women of Germany. They de- 
scribed it as a land that flowed with the milk and 
honey of man’s considerate treatment of woman, 
where the Teutonic kind of husband was unknown, 
and the American kind grew on every tree. 

“ There are a thousand inhabitants in Eberach,” 
Emma said, continuing her calculations after they 
had wrapped themselves in their linen dusters and 
the car was under way for Niedenfels Castle, “ of 
which, let us say, half are women. If we per- 
suade fifteen per cent, of five hundred women to 
emigrate, that ’ll be in all, seventy-five.” 


64 


The Great Plan 


“ Yes,” said Juliet, lying back In the tonneau 
and listening dreamily to her friend as she con- 
tinued her optimistic calculations. 

“ And that number added to the three hundred 
promises we Ve already obtained from Lauter- 
bach, Mannheim, and Bingen makes nearly four 
hundred women that have promised to leave Ger- 
many within the month. Just wait till that comes 
to the Kaiser’s ears I ” She flushed with antici- 
patory success. 

‘‘Yes,” said Juliet, waking up suddenly, “and 
when you think of all the promises Dolly Price 
and the other lieutenants have obtained in their 
parts of the country, why — ” 

“ Why, you certainly can see your favorite 
horse coming In under the wire,” said the young 
lady from Kentucky; and though her dear little 
dignity as a rule made her niggardly of such dem- 
onstrations, she hugged the younger girl ecstat- 
ically. 

Niedenfels was becoming very gay. The pres- 
ence of the compulsory guest, Mr. Horde, made 
it gay; the comings and goings of Adrian Kim- 
berley from his castle across the river made it 
gay; and now its gayety had been added to by the 


The Great Plan 


65 


arrival of still another guest, making it seem, as 
Juliet said, “ exactly like a house-party.” 

The new arrival was Sigart von Hesse-Schwerin, 
an exceedingly handsome young German grafin 
whom Emma and Juliet had met at their school 
in Munich. She had black hair combed straight 
back from an engaging widow’s peak on her fore- 
head, a brilliant white and red complexion, and 
an amiable temper. For other recommendations 
to Emma’s favor, she was related to a royal prin- 
cess and would obey the captivating little Amer- 
ican’s least command, so great was her devotion. 

“Ah, Emma, my dear one!” she said — she 
spoke English well — “you have had your way! 
I have lost my poor Adalbert! ” Here she shed 
tears. 

The three girls were sitting in Emma’s room 
on the day of the young countess’s arrival, while 
her maid unpacked her things, when this distress- 
ing incident occurred. 

Emma’s ready color rose but rather impatiently 
than guiltily. “ I suppose you mean that you ’ve 
broken with your fiance? ” she said calmly. The 
countess, who had stopped crying, nodded with her 
face in her handkerchief. 


66 


The Great Plan 


“ But, my dear girl,” Miss Daingerfield went 
on, in expostulating tones, “ what could you ex- 
pect? I couldn’t let you be one of the chief of- 
ficers of the Niedenfels Suffrage Emigration So- 
ciety ” — that was the name she had given her 
project — “and come here and stay at headquar- 
ters with Juliet and me, when all the time you 
meant to marry one of the enemies of the cause, 
could I?” 

“ I suppose not,” sniffed Sigart von Hesse- 
Schwerin, “ but it ’s hard, very hard! Of course, 
I think everything of you and Juliet, and I think 
the Great Plan is splendid, but Adalbert — I do 
love Adalbert! And it’s hard to give him up 
forever and ever ! ” She threatened tears again. 

“ Now, don’t do that! ” advised Emma hastily, 
while Juliet sympathetically proffered cake and tea 
from a nearby table, “ don’t cry, Sigart, it ’s silly 
of you. I never said you would have to give Adal- 
bert up forever and ever. Only till he promises 
to be good and turn suffragist ! ” 

“ But he never will ! He says he ’d rather give 
up the army and turn clerk! He says it’s un- 
manly ! He says it ’s foreign to his principles and 
his bringing up ! ” 


The Great Plan 


67 


“Well, what if he does? It doesn’t matter. 
Don’t you see, of course he says that at first, they 
all do” — she was thinking of Graham — “but 
you can be perfectly certain he ’ll come round to 
your way of thinking when he ’s been forbidden 
the sight of you for a month or two I ” 

“ Do you think so? ” said the countess, bright- 
ening a little — her rather ponderous mind was a 
source of great amusement to the two Americans 
— “ We were to have been married in June I ” 

“ Mercy, yes! ” said the others together, “ And 
if he does n’t you ’re no worse off than I am 
myself,” Emma added. “ I ’m not going to marry 
Mr. Horde until he promises the same thing, and 
it ’s more than likely, if the cause needs too much 
of my time, that I won’t marry at all!” She 
wanted them to know that she never asked her 
lieutenants to do what she would not do herself. 

“ But he ’s right in the castle with you,” said 
Juliet the just; “you can see him all the time at 
least, that makes it a little easier for you than it 
does for Sigart, does n’t it? ” 

But Emma refused to admit it did. 

“ Oh, Heaven! If I could but see him! My 
Adalbert ! ” moaned the bereaved one, finding that 


68 


The Great Plan 


she was likely to be forgotten in the heat of the 
discussion, and the other two had to leave their 
arguing and fall to comforting her again, and this 
they did with such success that by the time they 
were ready to dress for dinner she had consumed 
two large cups of tea and was laughing hysterically 
at Juliet’s reminiscences of their school days, and 
the two unsophisticated French girls who had 
never gone to the theater in their lives and were 
shocked at everything, and who thought the ditty, 
“ I love coffee, I love tea, I love the boys and the 
boys love me,” as rendered by Juliet, was “ the 
devil ” of a song. 

Adrian Kimberley had made up his mind to 
give a dinner, and in consequence the castle of 
Reichenstein, his castle, was in a great state of 
excitement. A chef was sent for from Paris, and 
one of the smaller rooms, on the ground floor, 
was being remodelled to look like the Pompeian 
room in a certain Chicago hotel. Emma was a 
daughter of wealth herself, but she was a practical 
soul, and she could n’t help remonstrating with 
him about the cost of the latter proceeding. He 
told her that it was a strange thing if he could n’t 
think of a new way to spend money without being 


The Great Plan 


69 


scolded for it, and that he always stayed at that 
hotel when he went to Chicago, and that lately 
he *d felt homesick for the Pompeian room. 
Emma could say no more because Kimberley was 
giving the dinner in honor of her friend, the 
Grafin Sigart von Hesse-Schwerin, and she did n’t 
think it would be polite. And certainly it could 
not be denied that the evening was a success. 

The dining-room was a beautiful replica of the 
room after which it was copied. Everything was 
complete, from lava-red walls, stone columns 
and hanging globes of light, to the murmur- 
ous fountain that played in its green jade basin 
in the center of the mosaic floor. The only point 
of dissimilarity was that Kimberley had substi- 
tuted for the usual small tables a specially con- 
structed one which encircled the fountain, having 
room for seats only on the outer side of it. 

“ I want everybody to see the fountain all the 
time,” he explained proudly. It was a costly toy 
and it was very evident that he did n’t want that 
fact forgotten. 

But the French chef, and the waiters from a 
Heidelberg hotel, and the fountain were not the 
only imported features of the afiair. Some of the 


70 


The Great Plan 


guests themselves had also been brought to Reich- 
enstein for the occasion. These were friends of 
Adrian’s, who had a large acquaintance and was 
himself related to an English family of distinction. 
They constituted Victor Rodite, a French sculptor 
of international reputation; Olaf Sellig, a pale- 
faced young Norwegian who had invented a sub- 
marine boat; Borlock Demetri Bashki, a Russian 
prince whom Adrian had picked up in Paris; Mr. 
and Mrs. Geoffrey Loring, English people who 
happened to be staying at Heidelberg and who 
had consented to chaperone the party for their 
friend Adrian, and a young German officer in 
the white trousers and black coat of the Berlin 
Black Watch, who was the Burgraf u Graf zu 
Dohna-Findenstein. He had been motoring down 
the Rhine, had stopped to inquire the names of 
the castles round about which were worth seeing, 
and had been pressed by the hospitable American 
to stay for dinner. 

If Adrian had done well in the matter of re- 
building and equipping Emma’s castle, he had done 
no less for himself. The living-room at Reichen- 
stein was rich in ease and color and taste, no com- 
fort of home was lacking and luxuries undreamed 


The Great Plan 


71 


of in the ordinary home asked for appreciation on 
every side. There were punkahs from India 
in anticipation of midsummer weather, morocco 
leather chairs of every degree of comfort, skins of 
polar bears, shot by the host, a gorgeous fire of 
specially prepared driftwood in the enormous fire- 
place, and everywhere roses and violets in great 
Persian vases. Over the mantlepiece of Frank- 
enthal porcelain was an original Ruysdael; while 
modern French windows opened out to broad ter- 
races on one side ; on the other, to a hanging gar- 
den of flowers and trees and shrubs which glowed 
hundreds of feet above the Rhine like a giant 
bouquet. But in spite of the striking individuality 
of taste everywhere displayed, it was ruled by a 
strong feeling for the fitness of things, and no in- 
congruity was so glaring as to detract from the 
medieval flavor of the room, which was left in 
possession of its deep window embrasures, its stone 
floors, its low-raftered ceiling, and its skillfully re- 
touched wall paintings. 

They were to dine at eight, and it was a quarter 
past that hour when the party from Castle Nied- 
enfels arrived. Emma and Juliet were in thin 
white dresses of that kind of simplicity which Lib- 


72 


The Great Plan 


erty & Co. delights to sell to wealthy American 
patrons, and the countess was resplendent in a 
superb gown of yellow satin and lace. As for 
poor little six-foot Graham Horde, he would have 
looked the picture of manly elegance and fashion 
in his correct evening clothes with his fair hair 
burnished back on his forehead, his good-looking 
face abeam with smiles, except for the fact that 
he carried under his left arm an iron ball which 
he hoped was not too obtrusively attached by a 
long rusty chain to his left ankle. 

For a moment the unexpected array of foreign 
guests against such a sumptuous background rather 
over-awed the two American girls, or as Emma 
would have put it, made him feel “debutantish.’* 
Juliet was entitled to this feeling, for she was not 
to make her debut until the following winter and 
showed it by allowing Victor Rodite to talk to her 
for the quarter of an hour before dinner was an- 
nounced without making any reply beyond a blush. 
Emma, however, who had spent a season at New- 
port, and had with a partner led some of the smart- 
est cotillions in Kentucky, was able to conceal her 
trepidation, and looked up at the big red-bearded 
Bashki with the most confiding air in the world 


The Great Plan 


73 


while she told him that the one ambition of her 
life had been gratified that evening: she had met 
a Russian prince. 

Somewhat to Emma’s suprise, for Sigart had 
just come from a round of gayety in Berlin and 
must be used, one would have thought, to society 
in any aspect, cosmopolitan or otherwise, it was 
the Countess Sigart who showed the greatest per- 
turbation and loss of self-possession while the in- 
troductions were being made. When, indeed, it 
came her turn to meet her countryman, the young 
Burgraf, it almost seemed as if she were about to 
faint; she went so suddenly from red to white. 

Emma, who was observing this phenomenon 
with astonishment, for just an instant thought the 
two must have known each other before and that 
there was some secret between them to cause her 
friend such agitation. Sigart’s instant recovery of 
composure, however, her impassive manner of 
acknowledging the introduction, and the apparent 
indifference with which she treated the young man 
throughout the dinner compelled Emma to aban- 
don the idea. Yet if she could have overheard 
the two, who sat side by side, address each other 
in German as “ Sigart ” and “ Adalbert,” between 


74 


The Great Plan 


snatches of conversation meant for their neigh- 
bors ; if she could have heard one say to the other, 
“ Oh, Adalbert, how could you? ” and the other 
reply, “ Darling, I could n’t help it, I must 
be near you, I can not part from you like that; 
you would not tell me the castle’s name, so I set 
out to find it the minute you had gone ” : the 
American girl would have been proud of her own 
acumen. 

“But what will you do now?” asked Sigart, 
after a few minutes enforced conversation in Eng- 
lish with the young inventor on her right. 

“ Stay at some hotel in Heidelberg and see as 
much of you as I can.” 

Sigart bent her beautiful dark brows and looked 
troubled. “ But my promise to Miss Dainger- 
field,” she whispered. “ You know I said if she 
let me come to castle Niedenfels I would n’t see 
you again, until you — ” 

“ I know, I know,” cut in the Burgraf Dohna- 
Findenstein impatiently. “ But, tell me this, if 
you don’t tell her I ’m your fiance, how will she 
know? Unless, of course, you have already done 
so?” He looked anxiously at Sigart as this 
thought occurred to him, 


The Great Plan 


75 

“She doesn’t know you by your title; she’s 
only heard me call you Adalbert,” the girl reas- 
sured him, “ but still, I don’t know, I don’t like to 
deceive her — ” She glanced guiltily across the 
fountain to where Emma was talking to three men 
at once with every appearance of enjoyment, quite 
unaware of the treachery brewing in her camp. 

“ Of course,” said the young man, his habitually 
red face growing redder still while he tugged at 
his short, fair mustache, “ if you care more for 
that American girl than you do for me — ” 

“No I No! Dearest, how can you think 
so ? ” interposed the countess hurriedly. “ It shall 
be as you say, but we ’ll have to meet without let- 
ting anyone know: if you went over to Niedenfels 
all the time to see me she would soon suspect who 
you are. It is n’t easy to deceive an American.” 

The dinner was very long, and before it ended 
was more riotous than Mrs. Loring, the chap- 
erone, had any idea it was going to be. A high- 
priced orchestra from Mannheim, concealed in a 
forest of fern and flowers, played different waltzes 
for every tempting course. The fountain gurgled 
thirstily over the electric lights cleverly placed be- 
neath its waters, and incense, heavy and sweet like 


76 


The Great Plan 


the chaperone herself, burned thickly in great brass 
samovars on the floor. If roses had dropped 
from the ceiling, Juliet, who had read Quo V adis 
five times, would not have been surprised. Every- 
body sang, and young Mr. Sellig and Victor Ro- 
dite told stories of hairbreadth escapes from death 
in submarine boats, and of the finding of the child 
model for the sculptor’s marvellous statue of the 
young Jesus, which had lately found a home in 
the Luxembourg. 

Adrian’s tale of hunting tigers on foot and 
without beaters in company with the notable Rajah 
of Satpura, a young Indian prince whose fond- 
ness for joy-riding in a ninety-horsepower Mer- 
cedes, and talent for consuming raw whiskey 
had filled many a newspaper column in Amer- 
ica and abroad, was received with great enthusiasm. 
Graham, for his part, succeeded in convulsing the 
table by his antics with the iron ball, emblem of 
his captivity, explaining it in every way but the 
true one and making a perfect idiot of himself, 
pretending it was his wife and insisting upon hav- 
ing a chair for it, so that he could feed it all kinds 
of rich food. 

It was about this time that Prince Borlock 


The Great Plan 


77 


Demetri BashkI, who had not contributed a word 
to the general entertainment for the last three 
courses, but had been devoting himself steadily to 
the matchless “ Schloss Johannesburg ” with which 
a waiter constantly filled his glass, woke up. Fix- 
ing his eye on Graham, who was the guest farthest 
away from him, he announced that he loved Amer- 
icans very dearly, and that it was his intention to 
walk down the middle of the table and visit him. 
The declaration seemed to have a disquieting 
effect upon Mrs. Loring, for she rose hastily, 
and collecting her young charges, left the dinner 
party. 

The last glimpse the girls had of it before Mr. 
Loring, who remained at Reichenstein, hurried 
them from the castle and into the launch with his 
wife, was that of the great red-haired Russian 
walking down the middle of the table, picking his 
way carefully among coffee cups and flowers, to the 
place where Graham Horde, giggling loudly, sat 
awaiting him. It had certainly been a novel ex- 
perience for all the girls, but Emma, while she 
admitted that it had been a great deal of fun, reg- 
istered a vow before she went to sleep that night 
that “ Adrian must n’t be allowed to do it again.”" 


CHAPTER V 



AVE you ever seen a day in early 
spring when the last of ice and 
snow has gone and the brooks 
dash madly against their banks 
and the sun pours down with such 
profligacy that you feel it is trying to get into every 
nook and corner where there is darkness, and to 
warm men’s hearts as well as the fields? It was 
such a day, freshly born of Heaven, when Emma 
and Adrian Kimberley went riding in the Oden- 
wald. They had been out all the morning, their 
horses cantering noiselessly through the mossy 
glades, over the springy mold, until at last they 
reached the very edge of the forest. 

“ There ’s a good place for lunch,” said Adrian, 
pointing to a farmhouse on a slope not a field’s 
length away. 

“ Just the right distance for a race,” said Miss 
Daingerfield, and struck her smart looking bay a 
blow with her crop. Kimberley followed and 
78 



The Great Plan 


79 


away they went, but somehow or other, though his 
was really the fastest horse, he was the last to ar- 
rive at the gate of the farm. 

“You always let me win I ” panted Emma, as 
he dismounted to let her through. The farm- 
house itself was a big whitewashed cottage with 
a thickly thatched roof. It was backed up against 
the slope so that an entrance to the second floor 
could be made from the ground. There the 
farmer stabled his livestock in accordance with the 
custom of that part of the country, which seemed 
to have little use for barns. 

Two big-boned peasant women were coming in 
from the fields with baskets full of fertilizer on 
their heads, the mud black upon their high, stout 
boots. In the yard a young boy was taking the 
harness off a great shaggy dog, which stood be- 
tween the shafts of a milkwagon, and in the door- 
way sat the farmer himself. 

Now, however true it may be that Germany has 
ceased to be solely a nation of poets and philos- 
ophers, and has lost her old-time character as a 
race of soil-tillers, the soil-tiller, as a type, has not 
altogether passed away. Slow-moving, good-na- 
tured, and of inexhaustible kindness, he is still to 


8o 


The Great Plan 


be found in the husbandmen of a thousand farms 
in south Germany, and such a one Kimberley found 
the old man to be. 

In all the glory of the blue spectacles beloved 
of cartoonists, an almost perfect type of the kind 
of German peasant immortalized by Hoffman, he 
sat there in the sun smoking his long porcelain 
noonday pipe as placidly and imperturbably as if 
the Fatherland of his affections were still the 
agriculturally impoverished country of his grand- 
father’s day, instead of a rapidly rising world 
power of the first magnitude. 

The old peasant’s greeting proved as cordial 
as his character warranted him to be, and in re- 
sponse to Adrian’s request for hospitality, made 
in the excellent German which was one of the 
many tongues Kimberley spoke, soon had his wife 
and daughter bustling about the spotless kitchen 
preparing a meal for which, in spite of his best 
efforts, the American was not allowed to pay. 

It was curious that Emma did not observe as 
they sat at the oilcloth table over brown bread and 
butter, beer and cheese, how often and how ar- 
dently her companion’s black eyes dwelt upon her 
face. Little goose I She never dreamed that 


The Great Plan 


8i 


that paternal air of Kimberley’s might hide a 
warmer feeling. But if she was blind, others In 
the castle were not, and the older man’s devotion 
to Miss Daingerfield had long been a cause of 
uneasiness to Graham Horde. 

“We must be getting back! ” said Emma pres- 
ently. “ I ’ve an Important business letter to dic- 
tate.” 

The forest was even more lovely In the after- 
noon, the riders thought, than It had been In the 
morning. The sunlight drifted Into Its deep 
gloom and fell slantwise against Its great cedar 
trees and evergreens, “ like the beams from the 
golden window In Milan cathedral,” Emma said. 
The beautiful German finches flitted In and out 
among the budding bushes, and rabbits ran across 
their pathway. 

Singularly enough the brown cob had edged up 
so close to the bay mare that the man’s rldlng- 
boot and the girl’s — Emma was riding cross- 
saddle — were constantly touching, and the two 
riders murmuring words of apology. 

This phenomenon, however, did not especially 
Interest Emma and she was not conscious of any 
pleasure in the nearness of the beautifully made 


82 


The Great Plan 


figure on the other horse, nor in the sight of the 
long white slim-fingered hands on the bridle, which 
she could just see without turning her head, al- 
though she wondered casually as her eye fell on 
them, if they were made most for cruelty or 
tenderness. 

“ Cousin Adrian,” she said all at once, tired of 
the silence that had fallen on them, and oblivious 
of the start he gave when thus interrupted in the 
congenial task of studying the little curl at the 
back of her neck that had escaped from the black 
ribbon she wore, “ Why did you retire from the 
publishing business? Was it because you had 
made so much money? ” 

Kimberley pulled himself together with a shake 
of the shoulders. “ Dear me, no I Publishers 
never make any money I ” 

“ That ’s what I thought, or at least that ’s what 
Juliet says they always tell her when she tries to 
get them to take her manuscripts ; you know she ’s 
writing a book.” 

“ Is she, indeed? ” 

“Yes. But if publishers publish books simply 
from motives of philanthropy, what do they make 
money on ? ” persisted the interrogator. 


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83 


“Faro or poker I” he said, impatiently. 
“ I ’m sure I don’t know. But look here, 
Emma — ” 

But Miss Daingerfield seldom allowed anyone 
to divert her if she had a goal in view, whether 
it was satisfying her curiosity or spreading the 
cause of woman’s suffrage in Germany. 

“ But, Cousin Adrian, if you did n’t retire on 
what you made in the publishing business, what 
did you retire on? Because you know you are 
rich; you have just lots of money.” Adrian gave 
a short, barely audible laugh. 

“ I retired on a fortune left me by my grand- 
father! ” he said, “ and if your curiosity is quite 
satisfied on that point I have something to ask your 
advice about. Do you think I ’m too old to get 
married? ” 

Emma was not at all disconcerted by this sud- 
den and direct question and she turned in her sad- 
dle and let her dark-blue eyes travel seriously over 
his face, over the lines beneath the eyes and beside 
the mouth, and the gray hair on his temples. Kim- 
berley winced under the scrutiny, waiting for her 
verdict as a man might wait to hear sentence of 
death pronounced. But the young judge was 


84 


The Great Plan 


clement. “ No,” she said, “ I don’t think you 
are, but why didn’t you marry when you were 
younger? ” 

“ I have a theory,” replied Kimberley, “ that a 
man who marries young makes a mistake. I think 
he can get a lot more out of life if he does n’t.” 

“What?” asked Emma, practically, leaning 
forward to stroke her horse’s neck. Kimberley 
hesitated a second. “ He can understand women 
more for one thing, and know them better if he 
waits.” 

“ But to what purpose, if all the time he ’s miss- 
ing years of happily married life? ” 

Adrian smiled indulgently. “ Dear little girl ! ” 
he murmured as if half to himself. Emma did n’t 
like the smile. She was afraid it meant he did n’t 
consider her grown up enough to talk to seri- 
ously. 

“ Why do you smile? ” she asked gravely. 

“ Because you ’re so young,” he replied, justi- 
fying her fear. 

“ But I ’m not,” she said. “ I ’m old, I ’m 
twenty-three. Cousin Adrian I ” 

“Twenty-three!” he repeated in mock awe; 
“that is aged! But, however that may be, I ’ll 


The Great Plan 


85 


tell you a secret if you like 1 I ’m thinking of get- 
ting married I ” 

Emma gave a cry of delight. “You are? 
Really? Oh, Cousin Adrian, I ’m so glad! ” 

“ So am I, that is if I find out that the girl I 
want, wants me.” He looked keenly at the girl’s 
face and mistook the flush of sympathy for the 
blush of consciousness. 

“ But why do you want to get married just now, 
so suddenly?” she asked. 

“ Because, in the first place I ’ve found the girl 
I want, and in the second place,” his voice grew 
lower and a look of the deepest gloom came over 
him, “ I find suddenly that I am lonely.” 

Emma knew him for a moody and a melancholy 
man, that his efforts to amuse himself rarely suc- 
ceeded, no matter how extravagant they might be, 
and that his laugh never went deeper than his lips, 
and now she felt the greatest pity for him well up 
in her heart. She flung out her little hand toward 
him and in the most innocent and childlike spirit 
of camaraderie, leaned for an instant lightly 
against his shoulder. “Poor Cousin Adrian!” 
she murmured in his ear. 

The result was most unexpected. The horses. 


86 


The Great Plan 


In obedience to some subtle signal from the man, 
came to a full stop, she felt on the Instant a strong 
arm about her slender waist and his dark face close 
to hers. Her heart fluttered unaccountably and 
the certainty that he wanted to kiss her flashed 
through her mind. Shocked and frightened she 
put both hands on his breast to fend him off, and 
at that Instant caught sight of Graham Horde 
standing quite close to them, under a big beech 
tree. 

Without realizing It the riders had come to the 
edge of the woods. Castle NIedenfels was only 
the length of a field away, which was about as 
far as Horde could walk, encumbered by his 
prisoner’s chains. They had stumbled upon him 
as he lay reading and smoking under a tree; a 
ludicrous figure if you like as he jumped to his 
feet and stood with his pipe hanging loosely from 
his lips, his book fallen to the earth, the leaves and 
twigs of his resting place still sticking in his hair, 
and that ridiculous great iron ball dangling at one 
white flannelled leg. But he was a pathetic figure, 
too, for he was deathly white and trembled and at 
sight of Adrian lighting a cigarette with apparent 
unconcern, his fists slowly clenched. Emma, when 


The Great Plan 


87 


he turned his fine honest eyes toward her, felt ex- 
actly as if she had struck a small child in the face, 
although the thing that had happened was not in- 
tentionally her fault. 


CHAPTER VI 



HE most wonderful man In the 
world, next to the twenty-fifth 
president of the United States, 
was amusing himself with his 
favorite toy, the German fleet. 


From the deck of the Imperial yacht Hohenzol- 
lern that soft spring morning he had been watch- 
ing the review of thirty-seven first-class battleships 
of the line on the brilliant waters of Kiel bay. 
Like so many pliocene reptiles of the turtle variety 
they had steamed back and forth before the sword- 
like gaze of the “ Majestat,’’ saluting, dressing 
ship, and hoisting colors, perhaps a dozen times, 
and now the gunners on the flagship were giving 
an exhibition of marksmanship. 

Target practice was possibly the part of the 
entertainment that the Kaiser liked best, and he 
was standing In the bow of the yacht with a glass 
In his hand watching the display with all his soul. 
Behind him, on the upholstered deck settee, the 


88 



The Great Plan 


89 


princess royal was sitting, and two sleek dachs- 
hunds, pets of the emperor’s, alternately lolled 
upon the hot deck and played in and out between 
his feet. 

From the deck of the yacht one could see that 
the gunners on the flagship were getting ready to 
fire again, and presently a puff of white smoke left 
the ship’s side; the deep boom of exploding gun- 
powder rolled across the bay, and the target, a 
big canvas frame-work more than a mile away, 
rocked to the impact of the shell. 

The august witness of this excellent bit of marks- 
manship forgot his augustness, forgot that he was 
the first admiral of the German navy, and the 
supreme War Lord of the finest army in the world; 
forgot that he was the modern Melchizedek — 
prophet, priest, and king — of a country whose 
greatness had made even England tremble ; forgot 
that he was the apotheosis of ancient and modern 
Germany, the very spirit of Teutonism itself, and 
jumped up and down and shouted like a boy, with 
perhaps the same childish glee that he had dis- 
played on that day in the Mediterranean when he 
first saw his flag as admiral raised on a British 
battleship. 


90 


The Great Plan 


It was at luncheon that day after the review 
was over that the first definite news of the occupa- 
tion of NIedenfels Castle by the young American 
girl, Emma Daingerfield, and her purpose, reached 
him. Rumor of the result of the activities at the 
Rhine Castle had reached him before; he had 
heard Indirectly, through what channel It Is difficult 
to narrate — for who can fathom the psychology 
of Rumor? — that batches of peasant women all 
over Germany were leaving the fatherland In dis- 
content because they would not marry military 
tyrants, the kind of husbands they said the Kaiser 
provided for them, and he had only laughed; it 
had all seemed to him a huge joke. 

But now, on this occasion, on the day of this 
spring target practice, he had particular Informa- 
tion that four thousand women from the farms and 
homesteads throughout the country had left Ger- 
many In one month’s time, and the matter sud- 
denly ceased to have a humorous aspect. He did 
not fancy, this Imperial author of the dictum 
“ there shall be under me one church, one empire 
and one king,” the idea of opposition or defiance. 
And that was what this concerted defection of so 
many breeders of the race seemed to him to 


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91 


amount to. No, “ Germany for the Germans 
was ritual with him, and though the number of the 
deserters was small, yet he did not like to think 
that such a spirit was on foot among the women of 
his kingdom. If he could not keep the German 
character of the race intact, if German women 
would not marry German men, what, pray, was to 
become of the Imperial dream of Teutonic 
supremacy? 

From Emma’s point of view the worst of it was 
that not only the Great Plan, but the identity and 
whereabouts of its inventor were now known to 
the Kaiser. If Emma had proved herself sa- 
gacious and longheaded in thinking out most of the 
details of her scheme, she had not been successful 
in keeping the source of the new movement from 
official and royal ears. Her residence in a ruined 
castle on the Rhine which was supposed to have 
preserved her secret had proved no shield at all. 
The Countess Sigart, thrilled by the variation 
which her part in the plan made in her dully con- 
ventional life, had written her aunt, the Princess X. 
a full account of the wild doings of the “ delight- 
ful Americans ” at Castle Niedenfels. 

This under strict oath of secrecy of course, but 


92 


The Great Plan 


what good is a secret that can not be shared with at 
least one friend? And the princess, acting on the 
theory that it is no good at all, had told a princess 
who lived more closely in touch with court circles. 
After that it soon was the property of that lady’s 
husband, a distinguished member of the Reichstag, 
and he had lost no time in telling it, for what it 
was worth, to the Kaiser. 

The Emperor was by no means alarmed, in spite 
of his deep disapproval of the new movement as 
instigated by the young American girl. Miss Dain- 
gerfield. Not as yet. What were four thousand 
women in a country of sixty millions? Then, too, 
respect for the powerful government which the 
young women in question represented, and reluc- 
tance to adopt stringent and serious measures for 
the suppression of a scheme whose founders were 
two young girls, kept him from taking any imme- 
diate step to combat the project. That it should 
be closely watched and the extent of its operations 
investigated, he felt, however, to be necessary. 

So the prominent member of the Reichstag, who 
was husband to the princess who was friend to the 
princess who was aunt to the Countess Sigart, was 
ordered to place the matter in the hands of the 


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93 


Berlin chief of police. This official, he was told, 
would undoubtedly station a spy at the headquar- 
ters of the new movement, to keep it and its pro- 
moters under surveillance. 


CHAPTER VII 


ASTLE NIEDENFELS, like most 



of the ruins on the Rhine, had a 
variegated history. One of its 
towers was of obscure Roman 
origin, but the main part of it was 


supposed to have been built by Otho of Wittels- 
bach, a count palatine of the Rhine, in 1195. Its 
next master seemed to have been, from all ac- 
counts, Ottocar, a lawless robber baron who would 
not bend the knee in homage to Rudolph of Haps- 
burgh, and was not subdued by him until near the 
end of the twelfth century. Its history becomes 
a little vague after that until the time of Duke 
Wolfgang the First, who was besieged there by 
the elector palatine in 1523, and whose tomb could 
still be seen in the vaulted chapel attached to the 
Alte Bau. The castle had escaped injury in the 
Thirty Years’ War, but was badly damaged by the 
French in 1688 when Louis XIV preferred a claim 
to the palatinate. However, it had been thor- 


94 



The Great Plan 


9? 


oughly restored by the electors, Charles Philip and 
Charles Theodore, in 1799, and because it was 
one of the best preserved of the Rhine castles, 
Kimberley had selected it for Emma’s residence. 
There were other persons famous in history and 
legend who had been connected with the castle. 
The Niebelungen hero, Hagen von Troneck, was 
said to have rescued a lovely lady from captivity 
there, and the great Prince Rupert of the Rhine 
had spent the night within its walls at the time 
when he was leaving the palatinate to begin his 
perilous enterprise at sea after his quarrel with his 
brother, the elector Charles. So Juliet had plenty 
of material for romantic visions; but of all those 
who at one time and another had inhabited Castle 
Niedenfels, the one that interested her the most 
was Otho, Count Palatine of the Rhine, for it was 
around that brave crusader that the legend was 
written which Juliet had read to Emma that day 
on the terrace. 

Miss Simms read everything she could find that 
had to do with the time in which he lived, even 
sending to her uncle in America for books, so that 
for her Count Palatine Otho of Wittelsbach was 
not a name and a legend, but a real living person. 


96 


The Great Plan 


With what ardent interest she read in another 
version of the legend of the nun about his ad- 
ventures in the Holy Land; how he rode ever at 
the right hand of the great Conrad, under whose 
leadership he had assumed the sacred badge; how 
he had thrice saved the imperial banner as It was 
about to be taken by the infidels, and had covered 
the bodies of two chargers slain beneath him with 
the dead bodies of the fiercest of the foe. So 
steeped Indeed was she with such reading that her 
every waking hour was haunted with sounds of 
martial music; the waving of banners; the glitter 
of plumed casques; the neighing of war steeds. 
For her every window In the castle had Its captive 
princess and every postern gate Its troubadour as 
It had been In the brave days when St. Bernard 
lifted the sacred cross along the shores of the 
Rhine. No wonder then If she saw visions In the 
daytime, that she should dream of her hero at 
night. 

The party had been for an excursion on the 
river one evening — Kimberley, Graham, Emma, 
the countess and Juliet — In Miss Daingerfield’s 
launch, returning very late, after an hour In the 
Staadt Park at Mannheim. Graham’s unusual 


The Great Plan 


97 


adornment, by the way, was an accustomed sight in 
this park by now, where it was charged to the 
account of American eccentricity in general. 

Juliet was tired and fell asleep the minute her 
head touched the pillow, and almost instantly be- 
gan to dream. She thought she was standing on 
the battlements of the castle looking down over 
the parapet to the road below. The moonlight 
was bright as noontime and the irregular group of 
buildings which composed the castle stood out 
plainly. She could distinguish even the difference 
in color between the red Neckar sandstone, of 
which it was built, and the yellow Heilbronn sand- 
stone of the ornamentation on the fagades and 
fancied she could see the dark green of the 
clustered ivy on the octagonal tower over the 
Rhine, in which the Count Palatine was said to 
have passed his declining years. 

As she stood there, in her dream, Juliet knew 
that she was watching for someone, or something, 
to come up that road. Her watching at last was 
rewarded, for a great troop of mounted men broke 
all at once from the Odenwald forest and cantered 
into the open. They were about a mile away but 
the road was hilly and now concealed, now re- 


98 


The Great Plan 


vealed them, until at length they clattered up the 
last declivity and she saw the moonlight on their 
spears and helmets; saw the drawbridge swing 
downward, the portcullis slowly lift, and heard 
the hollow sound of their horses’ feet as they 
crossed the moat and swept between the two 
towers of the gate, into the Schlosshof. Then a 
great gay young voice cried: 

“Hoi Warder I Ho! A light I Count Otho 
hath returned I ” And in her dream she walked 
along the battlement until she was able to look 
down into the courtyard where the troop stood, 
headed by a knight on a white barbary war horse. 
Then a horn sounded, lights leaped in every win- 
dow, warders sprang to the battlements, doors 
opened and friends and retainers poured down 
into the castle yard to welcome the returned 
crusader. 

In her dream she leant over the parapet and 
gazed down into this scene of confusion, of tossing 
torches, and stamping steeds, searching, she knew, 
for one face. At that moment the tall knight on 
the white horse, his shoulders covered with the 
mantle of the cross, moonlight glinting on barred 
helmet of steel, triangular shield and great double- 


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edged falchion, removed his plated gauntlets and 
raising his vizor, looked up. Juliet saw a face 
with a careworn brow, the mouth of a boy, and 
an exalted expression, which a great scar on the 
left cheek could not mar. His gaunt eyes met 
hers and instantly, the dream faded. 

Juliet awoke and hardly realizing what she did, 
leaped from her bed and ran to the window. It 
was moonlight, true enough, but the courtyard was 
empty and no glorious knightly gaze met hers 
from under lifted vizor. She roused herself more 
fully and sighed in disappointment. 

“ Only a dream I ” she murmured, then raised 
her eyes to the octagonal tower in the ruined part 
of the castle which Kimberley had not had re- 
stored for their use, and where she and Emma had 
not yet been. A light was burning clearly and 
steadily in the window at the top, that looked 
down the river in the direction of the ruined con- 
vent, where the love of the Count Palatine was 
supposed to have taken refuge. Juliet felt the 
shivers creep up and down her spine. Had she 
been a Roman Catholic she would have crossed 
herself. 

When Miss Simms came down to breakfast the 


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next morning a trifle late, everyone was in a fine 
state of excitement; Tilly had seen a burglar. 

“ He was just climbing out of ter big window in 
ter Alte Bau when I haf seen him I ” she declaimed 
for the fiftieth time, red-faced and important. 
“ It was six o’clock and I haf just gone in to dust 
before we began to get ter breakfast, and when he 
see me, he jump out quvick I And run like every- 
ting ! ” 

“ I should think you might have seen him too, 
Sigart,” Emma said; “you got up for an early 
walk in the garden, I thought? ” 

“ Did he have any booty with him, any swag? ” 
inquired Graham, while the countess negatived 
Emma’s suggestion in a low and unintelligible 
murmur. 

Tilly looked puzzled. “ Booty, swag? ” she 
repeated helplessly. 

“ He means did the man have any silver or any- 
thing he ’d stolen in his hands when you saw 
him? ” explained Miss Daingerfield. Tilly shook 
her head. 

“ Then, how do you know it was a burglar? ” 
said Juliet, entering excitedly into the discussion. 

“ More likely a robber baron 1 ” said Graham. 


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“ A burglar ’s too modern a product for a Rhine 
castle hold-up ! ” 

“ What did he look like? ” queried Emma. 

But they could n’t find out much about that for 
Tilly could only tell them that the intruder wore a 
long cloak, and that she thought he had on cavalry 
boots. 

“ Nonsense I ” responded Emma, “ a burglar 
would n’t be wearing cavalry boots. You must 
have been mistaken, Tilly. But did n’t you notice 
the color of his hair? ” 

‘‘ Yah,” replied the old housekeeper, “ I did. 
His hair was yellow like a German’s.” Emma 
and Juliet laughed and looked at Graham. He 
had been called “ Dutch ” at college because of 
the fairness of his hair, and nobody noticed that 
the Grafin Sigart had blushed crimson and was 
looking down at her plate in the most confused and 
guilty manner, as she had been doing ever since 
the mention of “ cavalry boots.” 

On any other day Juliet would have been deeply 
thrilled by this story of a burglar in the castle, 
but that Friday she was too much absorbed in re- 
calling her dream about the Count Palatine to be 
very much interested. All her thoughts were bent 


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on a project that had taken hold of her mind with 
great force ; she would ascend the octagonal tower 
that very day and see what she could find. 

It was difficult for her to get off without being 
observed by Emma, and that Juliet did n’t wish to 
have happen. Emma had laughed at her friend’s 
romantic visions too many times to make her a 
good comrade for such an enterprise. There had 
been an unusual amount of correspondence for 
Juliet to tackle, and it was past five o’clock when 
she at last found herself at the foot of the tower 
stair. She had come a difficult way to get there, 
through deserted halls and great empty rooms, 
and over a crumbly ruined bridge, so that she was 
glad to discover that she felt no more fear of her 
adventure in the cold light of reality than she had 
in her dream the night before. Only a delicious 
sense of excitement shook her as she wound round 
and round the tower in her breathless climb up its 
red sandstone stairs. Beside it, the emotions of 
“ stout Cortez ” on his famous peak, when he first 
looked upon the Pacific sea, were commonplace 
and insignificant. 

What if I really find him; what if he ’s really 
there?” she speculated, “what if he — ” A 


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door came into view at the top, brass-bound, Juliet 
saw with joy, as it should have been by every 
precedent of romantic literature. She knocked 
upon it twice before she could hear the sound of 
her knocking above the beating of her own heart. 
No one replied to this polite effort, but she de- 
tected a sound as if someone suddenly had pushed 
back a chair on a stone floor. 

Then indeed panic seized her, and her hands and 
feet began to battle with each other, the former 
to open the door, the latter to run back downstairs. 
The hands conquered however, they were perhaps 
nearer her brain and received their orders first, 
and she turned the knob and slowly entered the 
tower room. 

A young man was sitting at a table before her, 
his hands grasping Its edge, and on his face a look 
of apprehension and surprise. Beside him was a 
strange kind of machine, and on the walls curious 
scrolls covered with writing and diagrams. Juliet 
remembered suddenly that the Count Otho had 
been wont to while away tedious hours In his tower 
by practicing the “ Black Arts,” and she shivered. 

As she gazed at him his look of fear faded and 
she saw that he had a noble expression, a care- 


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worn brow, and the mouth of a boy, and that he 
was dressed In mourning. He had no scar on the 
left cheek. It Is true, but for all that she was satis- 
fied that he was the Count Palatine of her dreams. 

As for the occupant of the room, what he beheld 
against his door, brought there by the grace of 
God for his delight, was the statue of a young girl 
with parted brown hair, brown, beautiful eyes and 
a face like that of Mary In the “ Pleta.” The 
breath came quickly under her white dress that left 
the young round arms bare, and eyes and lips were 
widely parted. They gazed at each other In 
silence and a breeze from the Rhine Valley wan- 
dered In through the little window behind him and 
played tricks with the loose leaves of paper on his 
table. 

“ You ’re the Count Palatine, are n’t you? ” she 
said after a moment, and sat down on the bench 
near the table, relieved to find that It was so easy 
to address a ghost. The question seemed to 
startle the young man and yet for some reason re- 
assure him. 

“You don’t know who I am — you can’t 
guess? ” he asked her quickly. 

“ Yes, I can, I told you. The Count Palatine 


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10? 


of the Rhine,’* returned the girl. A sigh of satis- 
faction and thanksgiving escaped the presumed 
ghost, and he smiled, but almost instantly his ex- 
pression changed to one of pity. 

“ Poor little girl ! ” he murmured shaking his 
own head and eyeing Juliet’s curiously. She 
did n’t half hear the words but she did n’t like their 
tone. 

Well, aren’t you? ” she said sharply. 

He jumped. “ Yes, yes, of course I am,” he 
answered soothingly, “ I ’m the Count Palatine, 
sure enough.” 

She smiled beautifully then. “ Is n’t it wonder- 
ful? ” she said, clasping her hands round her knee, 
and rocking back and forth. 

“Wonderful!” he repeated blankly, and just 
shut his teeth in time on the question, “ What is? ” 

“ The only thing that puzzles me,” she went on, 
“ is how you can possibly be a ghost.” 

“ A ghost? ” feebly. 

“ Yes. You see you don’t look like one, your 
clothes are quite modern, and you don’t act like 
one in the least.” 

“I don’t?” 

“ No. I can’t see through you at all.” 


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The Great Plan 


“ Really? Well, I’m glad of that,” he mur- 
mured. 

“ Perhaps I could put my finger through you if 
I punched pretty hard,” she added as an after- 
thought. 

“ Never mind trying,” he interposed. “ I ’m 
sorry if you ’re disappointed, but I ’m not a ghost.” 

“ But you just said you were the Count Pala- 
tine — ” 

“ Yes, yes, that ’s a fact, I did, and it ’s true, 
too,” he stammered, obviously at fault, “ only I ’m 
not his ghost exactly, I ’m a relative of his. Er — 
er — an ancestor.” 

“An ancestor?” It was her turn to look 
amazed. 

“ Here, what am I saying? Not ancestor, but 
descendant. I ’m a descendant of the er — er — 
Count — ” He stopped. 

“ Palatine,” finished Juliet, “ Otho, Count 
Palatine of the Rhine.” 

“ Yes, that ’s it, thank you I ” 

“ You are?” 

“ Yes,” he went on nervously. “ Is n’t that 
fine? I’m a direct lineal descendant, a 
great-great-great-great-great-great — ” Juliet was 


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afraid he was never going to stop saying “ great ” 
— “ grandson,” he finished constrainedly. 

“ Oh,” said Juliet, and then added as a doubt 
rose in her mind. “ But you don’t speak German, 
you speak English all the time?” He looked 
alarmed for a moment and then answered hur- 
riedly: “Yes, I spent my boyhood in America 
and learned to speak your language there.” 

“ Oh,” she said again, satisfied with this abso- 
lutely veracious explanation and then sighed. It 
was n’t half bad to find he was a modern young 
man, that she could know and become friends with 
and a descendant of her hero beside, but she had 
hoped to find a ghost. 

“ Then you don’t put a light in your window for 
your lady love every night? ” she said. He hesi- 
tated, not quite sure of his cue. But he had no 
lady love, and he did not put a light in his window 
for her, and he was n’t going to say he did. 

“ I do not,” said he. 

“ But I saw a light in your window,” she pointed 
to the one behind him, through which she could see 
the Rhine already weltering in the sunset, “ last 
night. That ’s what made me come.” 

“ Last night? ” he said, and appeared to ponder. 


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The Great Plan 


“ Oh, yes ! I was burning my light last night, 
that ’s so. You see I had some work to do.’’ 

“ Work I ” she said, and then brightly. Oh, 
I know 1 You practice the black arts, don’t you ? 
He tried to conceal his surprise, tried hard to keep 
from looking the pity that he felt to find a mind 
so affected in such a beautiful body. 

“ Well, yes, sometimes,” he indulged her. 

She nodded. “ I thought so, that ’s what the 
legend said the knight of Niedenfels used to do. 
And yet,” this in a puzzled tone, “ you ’re not 
really his ghost if you’re only a descendant; I 
don’t quite see — ” She stopped but he saw the 
difficulty. He had been caught in a contradiction. 
If he was not a ghost but a descendant, she meant, 
what would he be doing with the black art? Ap- 
parently that was only a game for beings of the 
other world. 

He had allowed himself to get into the mess, he 
must get himself out of it. 

“ Oh,” he said, laughing easily, “ I did n’t really 
mean black art. I meant — I meant — medicine. 
I ’m writing a book, you know, and I have to study 
a lot to do it. It ’s a treatise on surgery.” 

“ That ’s very clever of you,” she said admir- 


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109 


ingly. “ I suppose those funny things,” she 
pointed at the scrolls on the walls, “ are diagrams 
like they have in physiology books? ” He hesi- 
tated, seemed confused, and then muttered an 
affirmative reply. 

“ And this, what is this ? ” she asked, touching 
the strange looking instrument on the table, which, 
if she had known it, very much resembled an outfit 
for sending wireless messages. 

“ Machine for analyzing chemicals,” he told her 
quickly, and covered it with a linen case, as he said 
“ to keep out the dust.” 

“But why do you work here?” she pursued. 
Asking personal questions was a privilege of child- 
hood she had not yet abandoned. He was not 
good at improvising but he did the best he could. 
“ Well,” he said, “ you see this is my home and 
I ’m very fond of it, and I thought — ” 

“ But it is n’t,” interrupted Miss Simms, “ it 
Is n’t your home, it belongs to Emma.” 

He looked dashed but recovered bravely. 
“ But it used to be mine, at least it was the home 
of my ancestors,” he said, “ though of course 
I know it belongs to Miss Daingerfield now. 
That ’s why I ’m in hiding, that ’s why I live in this 


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old, tumble-down tower. I ’m afraid she won’t 
let me stay if she knows I ’m here. You won’t tell 
her that you found me, will you?” All at once 
there was the keenest anxiety in his voice. 

“ Of course not I ” said Juliet loyally, “ besides, 
I don’t want her to know anything about it myself. 
You see she — she — ” The girl blushed beauti- 
fully to the great interest of the “ Count Palatine.” 
“ Emma makes fun of me, she thinks I ’m so aw- 
fully romantic.” 

“ That is rough I ” said the young man sympa- 
thetically. 

“ You don’t think I am, do you? ” 

“ Not a bit! ” he said stoutly, and then to him- 
self, “ So that ’s it, is it? I thought she was just 
plain dotty.” 

“ Emma hates secrets, and I love them! ” she 
said next. 

“ So do 1 1 ” he agreed. “ Then we won’t tell 
her, will we? ” 

“ Never.” 

“ Good I I’m glad of that I I should hate 
to have to go away. I ’m fond of the old place,” 
he really put quite a little feeling into his voice, 
though he flushed guiltily, “ and then, too,” he 


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went on, “ the tower is great to work in, so quiet 
and all that I ” 

“ It ’s a mystery to me why we Ve never seen 
you about,” said Juliet. “ You don’t stay in here 
all the time, do you ? ” 

“ No, but you don’t see me when I go out be- 
cause I take care only to go at night. I exercise 
and work on my book then, and sleep most of the 
day.” 

Juliet was quite satisfied with this explanation, 
and told him she was writing a book too. “ It ’s 
a romance of the Middle Ages,” she said beam- 
ingly. They talked about that for a while, about 
the joys of writing, and the difficulties of publish- 
ing, and then Juliet said she really must go. He 
had been wanting her to go for some time, he had 
thought she was interrupting his work, but when 
the moment came he found himself reluctant. 

“You’ll come again?” he said, and as he 
crossed the room to open the door for her, Juliet 
saw that he was not as tall as she had thought, and 
that he was a little bit lame. This only increased 
the romantic charm he had for her, however. The 
fact that he was slight and delicate looking made 
her compassionate, his sorrowful black clothes, the 


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more. As for the limp, it glorified him in her 
eyes. “Wounded in the Holy Land I” she 
thought to herself as she shook hands, utterly un- 
able to throw off at once the idea that it was her 
hero in person, not his descendant, who stood be- 
fore her earnestly gazing at her with his gray eyes 
that seemed in his rather pale face, she thought, 
like starlight on snow. 

“ Yes,” she promised him, “ I ’ll come when- 
ever I can get away. Such a secret I Is n’t it 
going to be fun?” He assured her intensely 
that it was, and watched her white pumps spurn 
the twelve dusty steps of the descent before the 
turn. Then she stopped and looked back at him. 
“ Ah, County Guy ! The hour is nigh I The 
sun has left the lea ! ” she quoted gayly, and waved 
at him for good-by. But he did n’t wave back. 
Instead he looked down at her anxiously as if he 
feared a return of her malady. 

“What?” he said, “I didn’t understand.” 

She laughed, “ Nothing, I was only quoting, 
but it haSy has n’t it? ” 

“ Has what? ” He came out and stood on the 
top step to hear better. 

“ Left the lea ! ” she cried at him, and ran 


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downstairs. He closed the door slowly, still with 
a puzzled expression, for he was almost entirely 
without a sense of humor. 


CHAPTER VIII 



HE arrival of a cablegram at 
Castle Niedenfels was not an un- 
usual occurrence, for that was 
Mr. Robert Daingerfield’s chief 
method of communicating with 
his daughter — he was not a patient man — but 
a cablegram for Mr. Graham Horde was out of 
the ordinary. It was now just two weeks since 
he had become a manacled prisoner in this Rhine 
Castle, and the editors of the New York Globe 
had by that time a communication of importance 
to make to their Special Article Man for the Sun- 
day Page. What it was you can judge if you can, 
for the time being, by the manner in which Horde 
received it, standing all by himself in the Alte 
Bau. 

He considered it, head first on one side, then 
on the other, in the characteristic way he had of 
waiting for an answer to one of his mischievous 
questions, then he put it down on the table and 


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considered it from his full height with his hands 
in his pockets, then he whistled a long compre- 
hensively surprised, and dismayed, whistle, and 
then — but of course you know what he did then 
if you know him at all — he began to laugh. Al- 
though no sane person would have considered it a 
laughing matter, he read the cablegram over for 
the third time and began to giggle in his gayest 
and most irresponsible manner. Then he tore it 
into shreds, stuffed it into his pocket and went out 
and had a private interview with old Heinrich in 
the garden. 

“ There must be a bowling alley in the village,” 
he told the old man, where you can buy me a 
bowling ball — about the size of this thing on my 
leg — and when you bring it back be sure you 
don’t give it to me in the presence of the young 
ladies.” He gave Heinrich a handful of silver 
and went off feeling reasonably sure of the secret 
and safe execution of this most uncommonly odd 
commission. 

If Emma had been of a suspicious mind she 
might have noticed that evening that Graham 
seemed to find his chains less cumbersome, and 
that he complained less of the weight of the 


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The Great Plan 


“ iron ” ball when he had to carry it, than he had 
done heretofore. 

“ I do believe lugging that thing around has 
given you more muscle, Graham; you carry it so 
lightly now,’’ was all she said, but she was far 
from suspecting why he laughed so heartily at the 
remark. 

The two were on their way down the Rhine in 
the launch to hear some music at Mannheim. The 
other girls had, for different reasons, declined to 
accompany them, and Adrian Kimberley was in 
Paris, where he had been ever since a certain horse- 
back ride he had taken with Emma. 

After that rather distressing affair, Emma and 
Graham had, of course, readjusted their differ- 
ences. If they had not, they would hardly have 
been steaming down to Mannheim in perfect ac- 
cord under a lovely lovers’ moon. They had 
talked it all out the very evening after the scene 
in the Odenwald, when the returning riders had 
stumbled unexpectedly upon the young reporter. 
Horde had taken his little friend to task for flirt- 
ing, and his little friend with hauteur and plead- 
ing, with anger and cajolery, had persuaded him 
that there was no ground for his suspicions; that 


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Kimberley’s action had been only fatherly in in- 
tent; that her part in it had been inspired by pity 
for his loneliness, and that it was never likely to 
happen again. Kimberley’s own indifference and 
cool self-possession, when he came to bid them 
good-by before running down to Paris, had indeed 
borne out her words so well that Emma began 
almost to believe them. She quite persuaded her- 
self that she had been mistaken, and that she had 
not seen the look of longing in the older man’s 
eyes she thought she had seen, and that he had 
not intended to kiss her after all. 

Juliet was perfectly delighted to find, now that 
Emma and Graham had departed for Mannheim, 
that she had the evening all to herself to do 
as she pleased, for the Countess Sigart had de- 
clined to remain with her, and had gone to her 
room on the plea of a “ headache.” Now of 
course the Count Palatine was not accustomed to 
making himself at home in the main part of the 
castle; on the contrary, continual residence in the 
cramped quarters of his tower was necessary 
to preserve the secret of his occupation of Nie- 
denfels. This Juliet knew, but tonight was a 
rare occasion. Emma seldom went out unaccom- 


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panied by one or both of her lieutenants, and Miss 
Simms made up her mind the minute the door 
closed after the President of the Niedenfel’s Suf- 
frage Emigration Society, to make the most of the 
opportunity. 

With lightly flying feet she ran to the ruined 
part of the castle and invited the alleged direct 
descendant of Otho of Wittelsbach, Knight of 
Niedenfels and Count Palatine of the Rhine, to 
descend from his tower. Tiptoeing and whisper- 
ing in low, excited voices the two repaired to the 
Konigs-Saal. 

The room was smaller than either the living 
room, or the library, and it was filled with com- 
fortable chairs and divans; the light was low and 
rosy, and white fur rugs and gold-colored walls 
with silk hangings, were pleasing to the eye. The 
main attraction, however, was the grand piano, in 
an elbow of the room, big and black and wonder- 
ful, with shaded rose-colored lights on each side of 
it; for Juliet had a remarkably sweet voice, and 
the Count Palatine who was extremely fond of 
music, yearned to hear her sing. 

She had made many visits to the tower since the 
first one, and they had grown to understand each 


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other better each time. The young man had 
come to realize that his charming friend was not 
suffering from dementia ; that she was only a very 
impressionable and imaginative young girl with a 
strong taste for romantic literature. She, for 
her part, understood that although this strange 
new friend of her own discovering might in truth 
be the direct descendant of the medieval hero she 
so admired, he was at the same time a modern 
product, and very much like other young men that 
she knew, so that she no longer fastened deeds 
and thoughts of bygone ages upon him, and ac- 
cepted him in a simpler and less mythical fash- 
ion. In other words, their relations had become 
thoroughly humanized and each without knowing 
it was far on the road to falling in love with the 
other. 

Those who are familiar with that portrait of 
John Keats which is called “ The Young Keats,” 
may be able to conjure up a fair mental vision of 
the “ Count Palatine ” as he relaxed comfort- 
ably on a 'tall high-backed settee that permitted 
him a perfect view of the girl at the piano. Thick 
light-brown hair, that would not lie smooth, 
framed his high white forehead; his lip curved 


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like a seraphim’s, and his eyes did In truth have 
the radiance of starlight on snow.” 

But In observing him Juliet never paused to 
consider whether she liked such delicacy of fea- 
ture In a man, she was always so struck with his 
expression. She thought It had the sternness of 
conquerors, the austerity of anchorites, the holi- 
ness of martyrs. Of such stuff she knew Father 
Damiens were made, and as she took her seat at 
the piano and her eyes met his, she wondered that 
she had ever, even for a fleeting instant, thought 
him effeminate. 

Strange how the eternal feminine forever de- 
ceives Itself In the character of the beings It most 
loves. For although the young man had. In 
truth, known suffering and hardship ; had become 
estranged from his family through no fault of his 
own; had been very ill alone in a great city In a 
foreign land, and had known the bitterness of 
struggling for a mere existence while he sought 
to acquire the knowledge which would make him 
what he longed to be, a great surgeon, he had not 
In the meantime become acquainted with the veri- 
ties that make for character. His experiences 
had not taught him, for instance, that it Is some- 


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121 


times as difficult to forgive people for being in 
the right as it is to forgive them for being in the 
wrong; that the crown of martyrdom is to suffer 
without complaint, and that privation needlessly 
endured is not holiness, but vainglory. 

His brow and eyes and mouth promised things 
for him that he had not as yet, whatever the 
future might prove, come anywhere near fulfilling. 
But what difference did that make? He was, so 
far as Juliet was concerned, just exactly what she 
chose to think him, and she was more than content 
with her own estimate of her lover’s character. 

“ What shall I sing? ” she asked, and he, in a 
flutter because her heavenly eyes so candidly ad- 
mired him, replied; 

“Annie Laurie,” and then in confusion added: 
“ I do so like your English songs. I have n’t 
heard a girl sing anything like that, any real home 
song, for many years.” But he need n’t have ex- 
plained himself. She had no thought except to 
comply with his wish. 

“ I always sing that for father Sunday even- 
ings,” she said simply, and began. 

He heard angelic voices choiring; he heard 
earthly voices soft and sweet, calling him to do 


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noble things for the beauty of unselfishness, and 
felt with a pang, as Juliet poured forth in music 
the assurance that for ‘‘ bonnie Annie Laurie ’’ 
the hero of the song would lay him “ doun and 
dee,” that it was the love of the humble Annies 
of this world that mattered most to men, and that 
to die himself on the bloodiest of battlefields 
would be an easy thing, if he but knew that his 
Annie Laurie loved him. He got up and sat 
himself down on the floor by the piano stool, and 
she did not notice that he leaned his cheek against 
her skirt. 

“ Gave me her promise true, that ne’er forgot 
shall be,” she sang and the tears came Into his 
eyes and he saw. with a clairvoyance that he did not 
recognize In himself that no man was ever good 
enough for any woman. She finished and he 
rose and thanked her earnestly. He did not 
tell her, however, half of the emotions her singing 
had aroused In him ; how he regretted that he had 
been so proud In the quarrel with his father; how 
he wanted to do better and be better In every way, 
and how he worshiped her. Juliet was pleased, 
but she didn’t want to sing any more, and said 
she was tired and that he must talk to her. They 


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123 


went over to the high-backed settee he had occu- 
pied at first and, his reticence disarmed by the 
feeling the song had aroused, he told her of the 
accident which had given him his slight limp. 

He had been on a trip through the grand can- 
yon of the Colorado with a companion, it ap- 
peared, and the two, in attempting to follow the 
Bright Angel trail without a guide, had become 
lost in the tractless mesas and mountain land. 
They had nothing to eat, and except for one flask 
of water, which he guarded preciously for them 
both, nothing to drink, and after five days of wan- 
dering, during which he doled the water out drop 
by drop, the other man had lost his self-control and 
had threatened to shoot him if he did not give up 
the flask. On his refusal to do so, the coward 
had kept his word, shot his friend in the hip and 
departed with the water. 

‘‘ But it did n’t do him any good, poor fellow,” 
said the narrator, “ for he did not get out of the 
canyon maze at all.” 

“ But you, what became of you? ” cried Juliet, 
not at all interested in the fate of the cowardly 
friend. 

“ Of me? Oh, I just told myself that if God 


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wanted to, he could show me the way out,” said 
the young man with the greatest simplicity, “ and 
I crawled on In spite of my wound, and lol I 
found the trail again. You can Imagine It looked 
as bright as angels to me. There was a spring 
by its side and some coffee grounds In a can by 
somebody’s deserted campfire, and I made myself 
something hot to drink and had strength to crawl 
another mile to a hotel where they took me In and 
kept me till I was able to go home.” 

Juliet drew a sharp breath. “ But were n’t 
you about dead when you got there? ” she asked. 

“ Yes,” he said simply, “ I was. The man that 
found me and brought me In (I fainted just as I 
reached the door) said I was nothing but a skele- 
ton and that he thought I could n’t live.” 

“Oh, you poor, poor boyl” she murmured, 
and her eyes filled with tears. He leaned toward 
her and touched her arm, and she felt his gaze 
fixed upon her. 

“ Forgive me,” he said, “ I did n’t dream of 
distressing you; I don’t deserve it, but I might 
have expected, had I thought, such divine sym- 
pathy from a heart as generous as yours.” And 
In a moment, as he finished speaking, constraint 


The Great Plan 


12? 


fell upon them. Unwilling to give in to it they 
hurriedly began to talk of trivial everyday mat- 
ters. 

“ Do you play golf?” he asked, and she said, 
“ a little.” 

Strange, is n’t it, how quickly self-consciousness 
can reduce perfectly rational and self-respecting 
persons to an apparent state of imbecility? In- 
stead of rushing into any banality in the effort to 
hide their feelings, how much better it would have 
been if they had given their feelings expression. 
But observe the hypocrisy of the course they chose 
in preference to that honest one ! 

He said, “ Do you play golf? ”, but what the 
dissembler really meant was: “ Do you love me? ” 
She said, “ A little,” but what she really meant 
was “ with all my heart! ” 

He then told her that he played “ a lot in sum- 
mer,” instead of remarking that he loved her “ bet- 
ter than his life,” and the other hypocrite replied 
shamelessly, “ It ’s a very interesting game,” when 
all the time she meant as much as could be, “ I 
did n’t know that I could care so much I ” 

“ Do you use an iron when you drive? ” trans- 
lated meant: “ darling, I can’t live without you,” 


126 


The Great Plan 


and “ Yes, usually a deck,” should have been con- 
strued as “ beloved, I adore you ! ” 

And so it went, this ridiculous conversation 
which audibly exchanged remarks and silently ex- 
changed hearts, the man in deathly fear that he 
would let slip a “ dearest,” or a “ sweetheart,” 
the girl afraid to raise her eyes for fear he would 
read in them, “ you are beloved.” And they did 
not notice, so absorbed were they in this interest- 
ing game of concealing their real thoughts from 
each other that once a man in the uniform of the 
Berlin Black Watch tiptoed by the door, and that 
on another occasion a muffled exclamation in Ger- 
man, and a suppressed shriek of feminine laugh- 
ter, came from the dimly-lit dining-room beyond. 
But something at last did occur to startle them, for 
all in a moment Emma’s voice was heard in the 
hall. She and Graham had returned early and 
the lovers had not heard them come in. 

“Good Heavens! She mustn’t find me!” 
whispered the Count Palatine as they both sprang 
to their feet. 

“She shan’t!” said Juliet, and promptly 
switched off the light. “Come on!” she said, 
and led the way through the darkness to the door 


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127 


that opened into the Alte Bau. Emma’s voice 
from the hall door arrested their flight. 

“ Who are you? ” she called peremptorily, and 
then they heard her say to Graham, as they stood 
there trembling in the dark, “ I ’m sure I saw a 
light in this room, someone just switched it off.”* 
Juliet lost her head. She no longer had the 
courage to proceed cautiously. “We must 
run ! ” she said, and they rushed into the Alte 
Bau. 

“There they are I I hear them I” shrieked 
Emma triumphantly, and Graham’s excited voice 
fell last on the fugitive’s ears, “ Tilly’s burglar, 
I swear I Look out. Savage, don’t turn the light 
on; he might shoot! ” 

The rest of the argument was lost upon the 
fleeing pair who faintly heard behind them the 
sound of two persons stumbling against chairs 
and tables in the Alte Bau and then the rush of 
pursuing feet. But they, Juliet and the Count 
Palatine, had a good, start, and had gained the 
main hall before the others were out of the li- 
brary, and were tearing on toward the dining- 
room. Even in their hurry, however, they had 
time to be surprised to see the one light that was 


128 


The Great Plan 


burning there switched off just as they entered. 
At the same moment Juliet distinctly heard some- 
body (or was it two somebodies?) just ahead 
of them open the great oaken door that led into 
the kitchen. But they could n’t stop to inves- 
tigate this phenomenon, as Emma and Graham 
were n’t very far behind them, and preceded by 
the unknowns, they rushed out of the dining-room 
and up a dark stone staircase in the entry as hard 
as they could go. 

“ If we only could find some place to hide, we 
could get you back to the tower when the excite- 
ment has blown over, Otho ! ” panted Juliet in 
the Count Palatine’s ear. The young man, 
though a bit agitated by his fear of capture, 
thrilled to hear himself so called. It was like a 
nightmare to them, or an Arabian Nights’ tale, 
or a bit out of Alice in TV onderland^ this breath- 
less rush through the castle with the mysterious 
pair, whom they could not see, running on ahead 
of them, and Emma and Graham in hot pursuit 
just behind. 

The chase continued on the second floor at the 
same tempo as it had downstairs, and in one of 
its great empty unused rooms and dark corridors 


The Great Plan 


129 


Juliet and her companion lost the two who had 
been leading it. Up one passage and down the 
other, through one apartment after another the^^ 
ran, passing in their flight a room with its door 
ajar, disclosing the good Tilly sitting up with a 
book, as was her custom, until all the young 
ladies were in bed, when she went in and wished 
them good night. 

Almost exhausted the fugitives clattered down 
the main staircase into the great hall below and 
ran at full speed for the other end of it where 
yawned the enormous fireplace of medieval dimen- 
sions. 

‘‘In there I In there!” gasped Juliet breath- 
lessly, as she heard their pursuers behind them on 
the marble stairs, “ the chimney-place is big 
enough to hide a regiment 1 ” Her companion 
obeyed without a word, and so immense was the 
opening of the fireplace, which in olden times had 
seen oxen roasted whole, that they did n’t have to 
bow their heads to enter. 

The pair made for the furthest corner, a 
nook formed by the angle of the wall, and en- 
deavored to crowd in, but to their great surprise, 
found it already occupied. What light there was 


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The Great Plan 


came from the hall, and in the semi-darkness they 
saw a man and a girl standing there. Juliet with 
difficulty suppressed a shriek. 

“ Don’t be frightened, it is I, Sigart I ” said the 
girl, “ Sigart and Adalbert. We have just reached 
here; we wanted to hide, too I ” 

“Well, of all things I” whispered Juliet. 

At this moment, Emma and Horde, momen- 
tarily thrown off the scent and delayed by a run 
through the apartments on the other side of the 
main hall, trotted rather wearily past the hiding 
place. 

The others peered out excitedly to watch them, 
the Count Palatine leaning over Juliet’s shoulder, 
his arm quite unconsciously encircling her waist, 
and the other two frankly cheek to cheek. It was 
dark, but for all that they could see — and per- 
haps the fact made Juliet and the countess feel 
less conscience stricken — that Graham Horde 
and their revered leader, whose pet maxim for 
members of the Niedenfels Suffrage Emigration 
Society was “ Snub the other sex until the vote is 
granted,” were clasping hands! 


CHAPTER IX 


T was a very busy day in the office. 
Lieutenant Dolly Price had re- 
ported her district exhausted, and 
Lieutenant Hester Williams had 
complained of lack of funds, and 
two new lieutenants had to be instructed as to the 
location of more stations. As a result a lot of 
telegraphing and letter writing and consulting had 
been necessary at headquarters. 

Letters from all parts of the country, from 
those who had heard indirectly of the emigration 
method of obtaining votes for women, and were 
anxious for particulars, further increased the bur- 
den of correspondence. The Countess Sigart had 
proved a valuable aid in Juliet’s labors, but the 
secretary still found plenty to do. 

Strictly businesslike in aspect was the big 
square second-story room, looking toward the 
Odenwald, which Emma so importantly termed 
“ the office.” Its walls were plain and adorned 



131 



132 


The Great Plan 


with shelves of books and views of peasant 
women at work in the fields, and a square of mat- 
ting was on the floor, in the middle of which^was 
Emma’s desk at which she was now sitting, Juliet 
and Sigart occupying smaller ones at each side. 

“ I think it ’s queer about Mary Kittel,” said 
Miss Daingerfield. “ I wrote her twice not to 
let those married women emigrate and she has n’t 
answered. Suppose you telegraph her to answer 
me at once.” 

Juliet, very neat in dark green linen, with white 
collar and cuffs, seized a telegraph blank and be- 
gan to write out the message as desired. The 
telephone on Emma’s desk rang. 

“ It ’s long distance,” she said to the others, 
“ Oberwesel, so I suppose it ’s Amy Pritchard,” 
and then into the receiver, “ Hullo ! That you, 
Amy? ” Silence a moment and then: “ Yes, this 
is headquarters.” 

“ Emma speaking.” 

“What?” 

“ You ’re going to — what? ” Emma was be- 
coming excited. 

“Be married? Great Heavens, girl, you 
can’t! You simply can’t!” 


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133 


“ Well, but what would become of your station 
and the Great Plan? ” 

“ I don’t care if he is, I don’t care if he ’s as 
handsome as the governor of Kentucky ! ” 

“ But the rest of us are giving up that sort of 
thing ” — it was lucky Emma did n’t see the 
speaking glances her two vice-lieutenants ex- 
changed behind her back or she might have fal- 
tered in this statement — “And you must, too! ” 

“Yes, I know it ’s hard, but it must be. Why, 
the whole system would go to pieces if we all got 
married! ” 

“ Well, I tell you, Amy, you simply can’t do 
it, you promised to stand by me till the winter to 
see how the Plan works, and you just simply can’t 
back out. r m not going to let you.” 

“ What?” 

“You will wait? Oh, that’s a darling! I 
knew you would n’t desert me ! Good-by, An- 
gel! ” She set down the telephone with a slam. 
“ That ’s the worst of girls In a business under- 
taking,” she said scornfully to her quaking lieu- 
tenants, “ they will go and fall in love.” 

tiresome of them! ” murmured the Grafin 
without looking up. 


134 


The Great Plan 


Someone knocked on the door, and Graham’s 
voice said, “ May I come in? ” Emma frowned. 
“ No,” she said, “ you can’t.” She rarely al- 
lowed Horde in the office. “ We ’re very busy.” 

“ But it ’s important.” 

She opened the door and he stepped jauntily in 
and beamed around on them all. 

“Why was it important?” interrogated Miss 
Daingerfield, looking at him sharply. 

“ Because I wanted so much to get in,” he said 
blandly. 

“ That is n’t important to me.” 

He looked the picture of surprised innocence. 
“ I did n’t say to whom it was important,” he 
rejoined. Then before Emma could speak, he. 
added politely, “Won’t you have a chair?” and 
offered her own desk chair to her. Emma took 
it and snapped her teeth together. 

“ And now if you ’ll be good enough to go? ” 
But he seated himself comfortably on the edge of 
the desk and leaned toward her with his most 
persuasive smile. 

“You are n’t going to turn me out the minute 
I come in, are you. Baby Savage? Why, I’ve 
been lonely all the morning, I surely have.” 


The Great Plan 


135 


Emma bit her lip, and glanced around at her 
subordinates as if defying them to find her placed 
at a disadvantage, and Sigart and Juliet, who had 
been listening to this tender interlude with all 
their ears, as they met that glance, fell suddenly 
to their tasks again. Indeed, the clatter which 
at once began on the typewriter was so great that 
Emma and Horde could hardly hear each other 
speak, and they found themselves immediately 
raising their voices. 

“I wish you wouldn’t be so silly!” Emma 
screamed. 

“ I ’m not,” he shouted back at her, and she 
yelled, “ Can’t you go away and let me work? ” 
and he bawled, “ I can, but I don’t want to 1 ” 

Then the racket ceased abruptly, in time to 
catch Emma assuring Graham that she would 
“ never let him in again,” in a perfectly unneces- 
sary roar. All laughed and Emma gave up fur- 
ther attempt at discipline, announcing that work 
was over. 

“Hip! Hip! Hooray!” shouted Graham. 
“ Then come out in the machine. I ’ll telephone 
the chauffeur” — they kept the automobile in 
the village — “ and we ’ll take our lunch — ” 


136 


The Great Plan 


“ Not so fast, young man,” interrupted Emma 
with dignity. “ This is n’t a house-party, it is a 
business establishment, and I ’ve plenty of work 
planned for today outside the office. We ’re 
going to canvass Mainz today and we ’re going 
down by boat.” 

In vain Horde begged to accompany them, 
arguing that she needed him to run the launch. 
Miss Daingerfield was firm in her refusal. It 
was n’t a pleasure excursion she said, and she would 
not take the launch; they would go as far as 
Mannheim in the machine, and take the river 
steamer there, it was quicker. Though for the 
matter of that, had she wanted to use the launch, 
the chauffeur could have run it well enough. 

In all Europe there is nothing so overrated as 
the trip up the Rhine. What its beauty might 
have been as far back as the Middle Ages when 
its wild cliffs were untamed by villages and vine- 
yards and adorned only by the rude castles of its 
robber barons, it is hard to say. It is almost im- 
possible to find in this essentially mundane water- 
way, where excursion boats whistle to factories 
on the shore, and factories shriek back again, and 
bustling towns blot out ruined towers, any hint of 


The Great Plan 


137 


the times which gave us such heroes and heroines 
as Hagen von Troneck and the Niebelungen prin- 
cesses, or reconstruct from such atmosphere the 
Rhinegau as it was in the days of Fredrick Bar- 
barossa, Rupert of the Rhine, and the gorgeous 
Wallenstein. 

At least Emma found it a strain on her imag- 
ination, although Juliet, who had spouted poems 
and legends all the way down to Mainz, and was 
threatening to do it all the way back, seemed to 
feel that it was no task at all. Mainz had been 
a bigger proposition to tackle than Emma had as 
yet undertaken, so she was well pleased to find 
herself on the homeward way with seventy-five 
newly promised emigrants added to her list. She 
thought it was a pretty good day’s work, and 
leaned back against the railing of the boat, tired 
with tramping through miles of city streets, but 
contented. 

The ugly brown, tree-denuded cliffs, vineyard- 
clad, rolled by panorama-like, and the afternoon 
sun beat with warmth unlike April upon the little 
steamer. A man with a white jacket offered beer 
and other refreshments for sale with the surpris- 
ing frequency only to be found on German excur- 


138 


The Great Plan 


sion boats, and up in the bow a group of Amer- 
icans traveling in a “ party,” a sure sign of ap- 
proaching summer, were singing, “ I Ve Been 
Working on the Railroad.” The rest of the pas- 
sengers were Germans, and Emma watched with 
idle interest two or three of them, not far from 
her, at a table covered with steins of beer and 
sandwiches, while Juliet and Sigart laughed and 
whispered together about something, which if she 
could have heard it would have cleared up what 
was still a mystery to her, the identity of the four 
strange persons she and Graham had chased 
through the castle the other evening in the dark. 
But her thoughts were with Horde, and in the 
fullness of the content which the day’s success 
caused her she began to wonder if perhaps she 
had been too harsh in refusing to let the young 
man accompany them. 

‘‘ But he is so upsetting when there ’s work to 
be done,” she reflected, “ he never takes anything 
seriously and it wastes too much time I ” 

The trip grew a trifle boresome to Emma, who 
was anxious to get home and announce her suc- 
cess to the always skeptical Graham, but a break 
in its monotony was presently afforded by the 


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139 


Americans, who, not content with assailing the 
ears of their fellow passengers with a complete re- 
pertory of the latest popular airs, and others not 
so recent, began a noisy game of what is generally 
known as “ Up-Jenkins.” The game was fa- 
miliar to Emma and Juliet, of course, but it 
seemed to be a novelty to most of the people on 
board and it was amusing to see the Germans 
crowding around the table where it was in prog- 
ress. Emma was incited to join the spectators. 

Six young people were playing. On one side 
was a girl with dark curly hair, a discontented ex- 
pression, and a pink-and-black poke bonnet, a nice 
looking stout girl in blue, and a young fellow with 
a Harvard ribbon round his straw hat. On the 
other was a pretty girl, who might have been a 
sister of the girl In the pink-and-black bonnet, 
with eyes that looked as If she were always think- 
ing of an absent lover, a slender little girl with a 
southern accent, and a young fellow with a clever 
face who seemed to be leading the party. 

They were nice people, nicer than Emma had 
thought; and all at once she found that the sight 
of them made her feel homesick, especially that 
of one of the older ladles who seemed to be re- 


140 


The Great Plan 


lated to the southern girl, a woman of distinction 
and presence, with humorous blue eyes of un- 
usual beauty, who reminded Emma of her mother. 

But the pensive mood into which this brief con- 
tact with people from home threw her was ban- 
ished by the sight of the big gray car waiting at 
the Mannheim landing to take them back to Nie- 
denfels, for on the front seat of it sat Graham 
Horde. His cap and dark suit were covered 
with dust and so was his face, but nothing could 
dim the brightness of his smile. 

“ I got the machine down in the village,” he 
explained, “ and came for you myself. That 
lazy chauffeur was n’t to be found anywhere ! ” 

And Emma felt her heart beat quickly in the 
way it did when she was particularly glad to see 
Graham. How cross she had been to him, and 
how angelic he was to come to meet them just the 
same! It was nearly six when they entered the 
Schlosshof at Niedenfels. Sigart had stopped in 
the village to do an errand and was going to walk 
up, so only Emma and Juliet alighted. 

“That was a great ride, Greggy,” said Miss 
Daingerfield, as he helped her out, “ I ’m sure we 
exceeded the speed limit every step of the way, 


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141 


but you were awfully nice to — ” Just here a 
most astonishing spectacle presented itself to her 
vision and checked the words on her tongue. 

The door leading into the kitchen part of the 
castle opened and five gorgeously-uniformed spec- 
imens of German police filed slowly and impres- 
sively out, headed by Tilly, gesticulating and 
talking loudly in her native tongue, at the same 
time walking backwards very much as if she were 
leading a brass band. 

“What on earth can they want, Graham?” 
said Emma, staring at the procession in aston- 
ishment. 

“ Search me,” he replied. But apparently she 
did not hear this helpful suggestion, for without 
heeding it she hurried over to the group of uni- 
forms by the door, Juliet following her. 

“ Oh, Fraulein! ” gasped Tilly, “ already you 
have come! I look for you this long time, this 
police,” here she lowered her voice, “ have been 
here one hour, schon I ” 

“But what do they want?” inquired Emma 
anxiously. 

At this moment one of the policemen, evidently 
the sergeant, stepped forward and saluting Emma 


142 


The Great Plan 


gravely, said something in German. He was an 
imposing figure with his bellicose moustache, his 
spiked helmet with the gold eagle blazing over 
the visor, and his military looking sword. Em- 
ma, though she spoke his language perfectly, did 
not at once grasp what he said, his speech was so 
guttural and so rapid. Then, too, her imagina- 
tion failed to supply her with a guess as to what 
he could want. 

“What did you say?” she asked in German. 
“ I did n’t quite understand? ” 

At this point Horde saw fit to interfere, un- 
daunted by the fact that English was the only 
language he knew. 

“ What do you want here? ” he said, speaking 
with great distinctness, and raising his voice as if 
he hoped to make himself understood by virtue 
of making enough noise. But he stopped quite 
abruptly In the middle of a sentence, because he 
saw that the sergeant was paying no attention to 
what he was saying, but was staring and pointing 
at him In the most excited manner. 

“ What the deuce? ” began the young man in- 
dignantly, and then remembered the chain and ball 
on his leg and looked down, half rueful, and half 


The Great Plan 


143 


amused. “ It ’s my bangle that has attracted 
him,” he explained to the girls, lowering his voice 
needlessly. “ Funny, I would n’t have thought 
the old boy had an eye for jewelry! ” 

But the old boy evidently had more than an 
eye for that particular sort of trinket, for after 
much gesticulating to his comrades he began 
cautiously to approach the object of his curiosity, 
with the very evident intention of seizing upon 
him. 

“ Holy Mike I ” said Graham, starting back as 
he saw the entire quota of blue uniforms imitate 
their leader, and begin to converge upon him in a 
half circle. “ They think I ’m an escaped convict, 
or lunatic or some other sort of tick,” he said to 
Emma and Juliet, and then to the officers, “ Here, 
you mutts ! Let me alone, I ’m not a real prison 
bird, it ’s only a joke, this thing! ” 

But there ’s nothing harder to head off when it 
is once under way than the German Law, and the 
police sergeant’s arresting genius was aroused. 
He smelt the blood of a malefactor, and Horde 
spoke in vain. Steadily but surely the “ Polizei- 
Beamten,” advanced upon him and though he had 
intended to stand his ground, conscious of his in- 


144 


The Great Plan 


nocence, there was something so grim and pro- 
fessional about the stealth of the approaching bat- 
talion that Graham found himself Involuntarily 
giving way before It. On reflection he concluded 
that he had a decided antipathy to having the 
handcuffs one of the men was holding, added to 
his collection of prison chains. Yet explanation 
was difficult even If he had known German. It 
was ridiculous to say that your best girl made you 
wear such things to keep you from telling her 
secrets to your newspaper! But for lack of a 
better excuse, the officers might take a notion to 
lock you up In the Mannheim jail till you could 
send word to some American consul to come and 
get you out, and Heaven only knew how long that 
would take! Red tape was the national disease, 
he knew, and the Idea of spending a week In such 
a predicament was so little to his fancy that 
Graham began to back away from his pursuers as 
rapidly as possible. It was like a game, some 
strange variety of “ tag,” or perhaps “ Still Pond 
No More Moving,” Horde retreating step by 
step, jerking the Iron ball after him and the five 
officers following In a solid phalanx. It did not 
seem to occur to them to try to surround him, 


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145 


they simply followed wherever he went, jumping 
and dodging about the courtyard like so many 
mechanical toys. Juliet quite enjoyed the sight, 
but Emma was tired and wished very much to find 
out what the police wanted of her; so she could not 
see anything at all funny in this “ nonsense of 
Graham’s,” as she termed it. 

Twice round the Schlosshof they went, pursuers 
and pursued, and the pace began gradually to in- 
crease. Graham apparently was beginning to 
enjoy the thing tremendously. The unwieldy 
quintet were so easy to dodge and so ludicrously 
solemn all the time. He pretended that it was 
a drill and with every sharp turn and abrupt halt 
shouted “ Left wheel,” “ Forward march,” or 
some other order of the kind. But in his enthus- 
iasm he made one quick turn too many and the 
nearest officer stepped on the dragging chain and 
threw him heavily to the ground. 

“Heavens, they’ve caught him!” said Juliet. 

“Now, what’s going to happen?” asked 
Emma resignedly. She was not long in seeing. 
When Graham felt on his shoulder the hand of 
the police sergeant, now thoroughly enraged by 
the dance the young American had led him, the 


146 


The Great Plan 


thing no longer seemed funny. He had other 
reasons beside his distaste for the Mannheim jail, 
for not wishing to be captured. They were con- 
nected with a fear that this would mean the dis- 
covery of the exact nature and composition of the 
ball and chain he wore on his left leg, in supposed 
obedience to Emma’s commands. He did not 
waste a moment therefore after getting to his feet, 
but lowering his head, suddenly butted the police 
sergeant in the stomach, tripped up one of his 
men, and diving between the feet of another, 
made for the moat at top speed. He had not time 
to reach the drawbridge, for the two policemen 
he had not thrown down Instantly gave chase. 

“ He can’t jump the moat, it ’s too wide I ” 
cried Emma, thoroughly Interested In the scene 
at last. “ Oh, Juliet, he ’ll be caught, and I don’t 
know what they won’t do to him now, after 
knocking down three policemen I ” 

“ He might jump It If he did n’t have that 
heavy iron ball chained to his ankle,” cried Miss 
Simms, fairly dancing in her excitement. As she 
spoke, Horde reached the edge of the moat. He 
measured the distance across with his eye, then 
threw a quick glance over his shoulder. Two 


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147 


policemen were hard at his heels and three more 
were sprinting down the court after him. He 
had not a second to lose. Obviously there was 
only one thing to be done. Although it seemed 
to the onlookers a deed beyond human strength, 
he picked up the iron ball, and leaped the moat. 
He had not been standing-broad-jump champion 
during his senior year at college, for nothing. 

Emma and Juliet cried out in relief and ad- 
miration while the two fat helmeted Germans, 
who had been his foremost pursuers, came to a 
halt at the moat’s edge and stared at their mirac- 
ulously escaped prey with awe and wonder on 
their innocent Teuton faces. 

“ Why don’t you come across with that hand- 
cuff, Heine?” called Horde, laughing exultantly, 
and though they shook their fists furiously at him 
where he perched on the opposite bank, they gave 
up all thought of his capture and went back to 
finish the business which had brought them in the 
first place to Niedenfels. But by this time Emma 
had collected herself from the surprise which this 
unwelcome invasion had caused her. 

“ You ’ve come to do what? ” she asked aghast, 
when the sergeant, panting and spluttering, had 


148 


The Great Plan 


again endeavored to make his business known. 
He repeated and at last Emma understood. It 
was a terrible announcement that he had to make. 
The police had come to warn Miss Daingerfield 
that news of her efforts to persuade the peasant 
women and women of the villages, to leave Ger- 
many, had reached the ears of the authorities, 
and that they had ordered all further activity to 
cease immediately. Emma paled. The blow 
was a hard one, but she would not sit down on 
the kitchen step as Juliet begged her to do. 

“But why?” she said protestingly, the con- 
versation in German, of course, “ why must it 
stop ? ” and wrung her hands when the sergeant 
replied that it was against the law in Germany, 
as It was In most countries, to incite the popula- 
tion to emigrate. 

Juliet tried to soothe her. “ You know, 
Emma,” she said In English, “ Mr. Kimberley did 
say we might have to fear something of the 
kind I ” But her friend did not heed her. With 
dry lips and dulled voice she persisted In her In- 
quiry. 

“ How did they know,” she said to the officer, 
“ who we were, and where we lived? ” 


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149 


For reply he took out a sheet of paper covered 
with typewriting, and offered It to her. 

Emma snatched It from his hand and scanned 
It eagerly. It told all about the Great Plan, she 
saw, and was correct In every detail, giving her 
full name and Juliet’s and a description of Nle- 
denfels. Miss Dalngerfield sank down on the 
kitchen steps, bewildered. How could the police 
have obtained Information about the operation of 
the Great Plan and the Identity of Its operatives 
so exact and precise? Not In any way that she 
could think of unless someone In the secret had 
betrayed It. Who was It? Who was the trai- 
tor? Who could It be? Juliet? Graham? SI- 
gart? Cousin Adrian? She would as soon sus- 
pect herself. As for Tilly and Greta and old 
Heinrich and the chauffeur who lived down In the 
village, they did not know enough about It to tell 
anything worth while. The thing was a mystery. 
She bowed her head to think, oblivious of Juliet’s 
sympathetic little hand which wound itself consol- 
ingly In hers. 

“ Achscuse me, Fraulein Emma,” It was Tilly 
who roused her, “The sergeant says, he say — ” 
she began. 


150 


The Great Plan 


“Well, what now?” enquired Emma, without 
looking up. 

“ He says you must go to Mannheim with him 
and sign a bond not to do again, this thing that 
you have done already. He says — ” But at 
that Emma sprang to her feet in sudden anger. 
That was really too much! To expect her to go 
all the way to Mannheim in custody and sign a 
bond like any common disturber of the peace. 
Her eyes snapped. “ I won’t go I ” she cried to 
the sergeant, giving free rein to the Daingerfield 
temper, “ or sign a bond either, you stupid, inter- 
fering old thing I So you might just as well mind 
your own business ! ” 

In Germany the policeman is a veritable little 
tin god on wheels, whose dignity no one dares to 
insult. The sergeant’s face grew purple at 
Emma’s tirade. He said nothing, however, 
merely waved two fingers at his subordinates, who 
silently and promptly fell into rank, two on each 
side of Emma, and she saw that they meant to 
take her to Mannheim by force. She could hardly 
believe her eyes, and trembling with indignation, 
sprang away from her unwelcome escort. 

“ I said I would n’t go,” she defied them, “ and 


The Great Plan 




I won’t. If you try to force me you ’ll be sorry. 
You seem to forget that I am a citizen of the 
United States I ” She threw up her chin and said 
it as proudly — generous Emma — as if she 
were not only a citizen of the country she claimed 
but had also the citizen’s privilege of the ballot. 
At this moment Graham Horde, who had been 
anxiously observing the scene from the other side 
of the moat, decided it was time for him to take 
part, and jumping the water again, came running 
to her assistance. 

“ What are you doing to this young lady? ” he 
inquired belligerently, as he drew up beside 
Emma. To his surprise, for he did not see the 
barely perceptible nod in his direction which the 
police sergeant gave to one of his men, the 
officer apparently did not resent this interference, 
for he bowed deferentially and began speaking in 
pacific tones. 

“ What was it, Emma ? ” asked Horde, who 
could not understand a word, “ what was the — ” 
But he interrupted himself with a sudden wrath- 
ful exclamation for he felt his arms seized from 
behind and in a moment, before he had time to 
struggle, his wrists were bound together. The 


152 


The Great Plan 


accomplice in the sergeant’s little strategy had 
done his work well. 

“ Oh, Graham, now we ’re both prisoners I ” 
said Emma, and in weariness and vexation of 
spirit she began to cry. Juliet rapidly followed 
suit. “ Arrest me, too ! ” she sobbed, “ I don’t 
want to be left all alone.” 

Graham had seldom felt so desperate and so 
helpless. It was indeed a bad moment for them 
all and it is hard to say what would have hap- 
pened if at that moment Adrian Kimberley, strid- 
ing up the path that wound up from the landing 
where he had left his launch, had not appeared 
upon the scene. He had a rose in his button- 
hole and the radiance of Paris was upon him. 

“ And what in the name of all that ’s wonder- 
ful is this ? ” he said, the song on his lips ceasing 
suddenly as he caught sight of the tragic looking 
group in the Schlosshof, the handcuffed young 
man, the weeping maidens, and the stern cham- 
pions of the law. 

“ Cousin Adrian I Oh, Cousin Adrian, I ’m so 
glad you ’ve come ! ” cried Emma, and leaped 
toward him. 

Kimberley beamed with pride and pleasure. 


The Great Plan 


153 


To see her again, to have returned at last, was 
joy enough, but to have the good fortune to re- 
turn in time to be of assistance to her, this was 
too good to be true. He patted the hand that 
clasped his arm so tightly while she poured out a 
rapid account of the afternoon’s happenings, and 
smiled reassuringly down at her. “ Never fear, 
you shan’t go to Mannheim,” he told her, “ I ’ll 
fix that.” 

Graham turned his face away; he could not bear 
to see the glance of gratitude she gave Adrian, 
and felt at the moment almost as if he hated the 
older man. 

For all that, Kimberley proved as good as his 
word. To begin with, he spoke German, and 
then, too, as it turned out, he knew the American 
Consul at Mannheim, and the head of the police 
department at Berlin, from whom the Mannheim 
officers had their orders, and so was able to 
smooth things out in every way. Graham’s pe- 
culiar leg adornment Adrian explained as the 
harmless fancy of an eccentric American; prom- 
ised for Emma that there would be no more insti- 
gation of the country folk to emigrate, and by 
liberal donations of bank notes to each of the 


154 


The Great Plan 


officers who had been roughly treated by the 
young American, and much diplomatic conversa- 
tion with their sergeant, at last persuaded them 
that Horde had not been guilty of that mysterious 
crime, which in Germany is termed “ insulting an 
official,” and was not deserving of a night in jail. 
When perfect cordiality at length had been re- 
stored by these measures, and the Schlosshof had 
seen the last of the bluecoats, a great sigh of relief 
went up from the Americans. 

“ It was splendid of you to settle everything 
so nicely for us, Mr. Kimberley,” said Juliet; “ I 
don’t know what we would have done without 
you, I really thought those wicked men were going 
to take Emma and Mr. Horde to prison.” 

“ Not at all, my child,” said Adrian, “ I ’m 
glad I happened along, that ’s all ; it might have 
meant a lot of discomfort and inconvenience if I 
had n t. Come on, let ’s go in. You ’re going 
to invite me to dinner, are n’t you, Emma ? ” 

But Graham made a motion to detain them for 
a moment. He had something on his mind that 
he wanted to say. He had been staring at the 
flagstones under his feet and trying to say it for 
the last few minutes, but it was hard to get out. 


The Great Plan 


155 


“ It was darned good of you, Kimberley,” 
he said at last, “ to fix things for me with those 
fellows ” — the effort he made to speak was very 
apparent — “ You Ve a good sort” 

“ Not at all,” said Adrian protestingly. But 
Horde wrung the other man’s hand. They all 
started toward the house, but at the door Em- 
ma, who was first, turned. Apparently Graham 
was n’t the only one who had something on his 
mind. 

“ It was good of you — you were splendid to 
manage everything the way you did. Cousin 
Adrian,” she said, and they all felt concerned to 
see how white and tired she looked. “ But, 
please don’t think on that account that every- 
thing ’s all right now. Don’t forget, any of you, 
will you, that I must give up the wish of my 
heart — that we must give up our work — Juliet 
and I. The Great Plan is — the Great Plan — ” 
Voiceless all in a moment, she turned from them 
and dashed into the castle. 


CHAPTER X 


OR three days gloom reigned at 
Niedenfels, for the president of 
the Niedenfels Suffrage Emigra- 
tion Society was keeping to her 
room, and refused to see anyone. 
'Juliet and Sigart went around on tiptoe and spoke 
in whispers out of respect for the sorrow of their 
loved chief, and Graham, who detested inactivity 
of any sort, busied himself with draping the office 
and the loved chief’s desk with black. 

On the evening of the fourth day, however, she 
came down to the drawing-room in her most 
ravishing frock, and with a radiant countenance, 
just as they had assembled for dinner, and hold- 
ing out her hands to them all, said, “ Friends, 
congratulate me, I Ve solved the problem I I ’ve 
found a new scheme I The cause is not dead 
after all ! ” 

The girls pressed toward her, and took her 
hands, and caressed her. “What is it?” they 

156 



The Great Plan 


157 


cried, “Dear Emma, do tell us!” As for 
Horde, in his excitement over her sudden return 
to health and spirits, he went so far as to imitate 
Juliet who had thrown her arm around Emma. 
She shook him off with a stern, disconcerting look 
of reproof. 

“ No, but really,” she said, “ it is the greatest 
plan! A sort of variation of the emigration 
idea! I’ll tell you all about it. You see, I Ve 
decided that I took hold of this thing by the 
wrong end in beginning with the country people. 
I don’t believe the poor oppressed hausfrau can 
get the ballot without the help of her more fash- 
ionable sister. So I shall just turn around and 
try the other kind of women — ” she stopped and 
looked around to make sure that every sympa- 
thetic eye was upon her, and all urged her to con- 
tinue with encouraging, friendly cries — “ I ’ve 
decided to go,” she went on, snuggling one hand 
in Juliet’s and the other into Sigart’s, “ to Berlin, 
and I ’m going to persuade the women in the high- 
est position there, the women of the court circle, 
to join me in a movement to — to — ” here she 
paused a second, and then continued in a low, 
thrilling voice, “to boycott the men!” She 


158 


The Great Plan 


nodded triumphantly as they started back in sur- 
prise. ‘‘ Yes,” she said, “ I ’m going to start a 
movement to boycott the influential men in Berlin 
until they agree to try to obtain votes for the 
women ! ” 

“ You he not! ” gasped the two girls, appalled 
by her temerity, while Horde laughed aloud. 

“ But I am” asserted the inventor of the dar- 
ing scheme, heeding neither their surprise nor his 
mirth, “ and what ’s more, Sigart, you he going 
to help me! ” 

“ I ? ” said the countess, looking thoroughly 
puzzled. 

“ Of course. What could I do in Berlin with- 
out you to introduce me? We start tomorrow 
together.” 

‘‘And what do / do? What part have I in 
It? ” asked Juliet in a small, aggrieved voice. 

“ Why, you 7/ stay here, my charming child,” 
her friend replied, “ and look after the castle, 
and inform the other lieutenants at their different 
stations of the end of the emigration scheme, and 
wind things up for me generally. Nothing could 
be more important! ” 

“ And where do I come in? ” inquired Graham. 


The Great Plan 


159 


If Miss Simms’ tone was aggrieved, his was out- 
raged. 

Emma eyed him coolly. “ Nowhere,” she 
said; “you’ll just stay calmly here and play 
Prisoner’s Base all by yourself till I decide what 
to do with you. Come on, let’s go in to din- 
ner I ” And laughing back at him where he stood 
staring indignantly, she swept away toward the 
dining-room with an arm about each lieutenant’s 
shoulder. 

True to her word, Emma, fortifying herself 
with a profusion of smart gowns with which to 
lay siege to Berlin, departed the next day for that 
city with Sigart and Adrian Kimberley. Al- 
though the latter had only just arrived at Nieden- 
fels, he had insisted that he felt the need of an 
Immediate visit to the capital. 

As for Graham, who had only been allowed to 
bring them to Cologne in the machine, he stood 
on the platform as the train pulled out, staring 
gloomily after them, much to the excitement of 
the rest of the passengers who could n’t make out 
for what purpose the curious appendage to the 
young American’s left ankle could be intended. 

Moved to pity by the sight, Emma leaned out 


i6o 


The Great Plan 


and waved back at the disconsolate figure. This 
charitable deed engrossed her so thoroughly that 
she failed to see what Kimberley noticed with 
great amusement, that her friend, the countess, 
was similarily occupied at the window on the other 
side of the train, from which the road was visible, 
and was waving devotedly, if hurriedly, to a 
young man in a big black touring car, who was as 
ardently returning her signals. 

Emma’s popularity in the court circle of Ber- 
lin, to which the Grafin Sigart introduced her, was 
firmly established before she had been five days 
in the city. But there was nothing extraordinary 
about that, hundreds of American girls — with 
money — have made a success before now of their 
entry into the social life of the capitals of Europe. 
Only perhaps her type was less familiar to Berlin 
than the tall willowy “ Gibson ” girl kind of 
American. Perhaps they were not quite used to 
sparkle and dash m anything so “ cunning ” — I 
use the word advisedly — and small. And in- 
deed, when Emma put on one of her priceless 
gowns, cut with the breathless daring of Drecoll, 
yet distinctly Americanized by its reserve, when, I 
say, she clad herself in some such masterpiece and 


The Great Plan 


i6i 


entered a drawing-room with the young blood 
deep rose in her cheeks, and her primly dressed 
hair snapping with such vigor and life that It 
seemed to give forth light, people sat up as at- 
tentively as If a trumpet had suddenly sounded a 
shrill sweet note. 

Full blown beauty, I suppose, is most to be 
adored, full-sailed ships meeting the sea with deep 
bosoms richly curved; but there are those, and 
some call them connoisseurs, who prefer the little 
racing cutter with Its slender grace. 

Adrian Kimberley was one of them. He 
thought he had never seen anything so charmingly 
fresh and young as Emma looked one evening 
when, by the side of her friend, the grafin, 
she — was It danced, or sprang, or merely 
walked? Into the drawing-room of the Princess 
Ruhlenburg, who was giving a dinner party. 
But Adrian’s taste In this matter was something of 
which Emma was unaware. The start he had 
given her that day In the Odenwald she had for- 
gotten, and had quite regained her former atti- 
tude toward him, so that he appeared to her now 
only In the light of her father’s old friend, her 
“ Cousin Adrian.” She was surprised therefore 


i 62 


The Great Plan 


to observe, after she and the countess had greeted 
their hostess, that Kimberley was the center of a 
group of attractive and distinguished looking men 
and women who evidently were finding him very 
interesting. 

She had expected to see him there; he had told 
her that he was going to the dinner, but she had 
not expected to find him so much in demand nor 
to see him holding the attention of such a charm- 
ing woman. This was the lady to whom Kim- 
berley was addressing most of his remarks. She 
was a sumptuous creature with heavy black hair, 
great blue eyes and a tiny mouth. Emma ob- 
served her critically and thought her very lovely, 
also, she judged, sentimentally interested in Kim- 
berley. Why else that play of expression, that 
constant laugh, that flattering attention to his least 
word? 

Her perception sharpened by this discovery, 
Emma looked at Adrian with new vision, the eyes 
of a woman ten years nearer his age, and she real- 
ized suddenly, as she had never done before, the 
distinction of his appearance and his charm of 
manner. His gay spirits she thought too, made 
him look almost young; therefore when immedi- 


The Great Plan 


163 


ately upon her entrance he left the neighborhood 
of the markgrafin, the most beautiful woman in 
the room, and hurried over to her side, though 
it was only because her vanity was flattered, she 
experienced a decided feeling of pleasure. His 
value in other people’s eyes had given her a higher 
appreciation of him. 

The fourteen guests whom the Princess Ruhl- 
enburg had gathered for her dinner in honor of 
the sumptuous lady with the blue eyes, were by 
turns bright and charming, interesting and de- 
lightful. Emma found herself enjoying it im- 
mensely, and in the same way that she would have 
enjoyed a dinner in Newport or Washington or 
Richmond. People of the same class, she con- 
cluded, are much the same the world over, what- 
ever their nationality. 

The one untoward incident of the dinner was 
when a fierce looking brigadier-general, at the 
far end of the table, forgot that there were Amer- 
icans present and began to criticise Theodore 
Roosevelt. The speaker was an unpleasant- 
looking man, the only such person there, and was 
invited for his high title and prominence rather 
than his powers to please. When he said 


164 


The Great Plan 


“ Roosevelt is an opportunist and a politician, 
nothing else,” Emma bore, it bravely and went 
politely on with her conversation; when he said 
her hero was “ a poser and a gambler,” she 
stopped talking and eyed the speaker gravely, but 
when the calumniator went on to state that the 
man under discussion was, “ like most Americans, 
Ill-bred,” Miss Dalngerfield could bear It no 
longer. Of course, she was not supposed to be 
listening, and more thoughtful persons near the 
speaker tried to hush him before It was too late, 
but the thing was said and the little American girl 
had heard, and there was, as Adrian Kimberley 
said afterward, ‘‘ the dickens to pay.” In spite 
of Adrian’s efforts to distract her attention, and 
his anxious frowns at her, he did not sit near 
enough to prevent what was going to happen by 
speaking — Emma rose, in this way gaining the 
astonished attention of the thoughtless brigadier, 
and Incldently that of the whole company, and 
addressed him. 

“ It Is of course possible that you are right,” 
she remarked In clear. Incisive German, leaning 
toward the offender. “ Mr. Roosevelt [Oh, how 
admiringly, how respectfully she dwelt upon the 


The Great Plan 


165 


name] may be what you describe him, ‘ ill-bred, 
like most Americans,’ but I ’m quite sure, this I 
know to a certainty [a glorious color swept her 
indignant face], that he never would be ill-bred 
enough to tell people the kind of man you are, 
in the presence of your countrymen.” She sat 
down. 

Amazement fell upon the guests; the hostess 
thought it was consternation and glanced almost 
angrily at Emma — she did not want the success of 
her entertainment clouded — but in another mo- 
ment a sense of humor came to the rescue of the 
situation and all laughed long and loudly, except, 
of course, the brigadier, who scowled down at 
his plate — he could n’t very well scowl at a lady 
— drank a great deal of water hurriedly, and be- 
gan to apologize in barely audible tones. No- 
body really liked him and they thought he had 
received as good as he gave, and that the young 
American girl was courageous and honest, and 
they admired her for her plain speaking, with- 
out criticising her unconventional manner. Euro- 
peans rather expect unconventionality from Amer- 
icans, so It was all right and the dinner passed off 
pleasantly and with no consequence other than a 


i66 


The Great Plan 


marked silence on the part of the rebuked officer, 
and a noticeable increase of interest In Miss Dain- 
gerfield. 

Afterward the young girl delighted the com- 
pany by singing, at Sigart’s request — the kind 
little countess was forever trying to show off her 
friend — a typical plantation negro melody. It 
was a “ stunt ” with which she had been wont to 
regale her* friends at boarding-school, and she 
really did It very well. Not that she had much 
voice, but the words, and the way she spoke them, 
and the quaint dancing steps and gestures with 
which she accompanied them, made it a fascinat- 
ing performance. 

Emma at first had been quite horrified at Si- 
gart’s suggestion that she should Inflict the 
“ stunt ” on a grown-up “ society ” audience, and 
had only yielded after prolonged argument. But 
good heavens I How grateful people are for a 
little novelty. Especially those who do the same 
things and see the same persons every day. The 
princess’ dinner guests went wild over the song. 
Most of them spoke English, but had never heard 
the soft darkey dialect, and they applauded en- 
thusiastically and begged for more. 


The Great Plan 


167 


Emma was a princess herself, however, an 
American princess by right of birth, and she 
would not cheapen her gift. One song she might 
sing at the request of her friend, but no more. 

“ No,” she said, sitting down on an ottoman 
beside Sigart and fanning her sparkling face gently 
with a tiny fan. “ I don’t know anything else.” 
And try hard as they would they could not per- 
suade her to change her mind. In the carriage 
going home, when the Grafin Sigart had her friend 
all to herself, she laughed and laughed at her for 
the public rebuke of the brigadier. 

“Ach! what an astonishment he was in! 
How his fat jaw did drop! ” she said. 

“ I suppose it was awful of me,” confessed 
Emma, “ I did n’t mean to do it, truly, but I just 
could n’t help it. Do you think the princess 
minded much ? I hope she did n’t think I spoiled 
the party.” But Sigart soon relieved her on this 
score. 

“ She told me,” said she, “ that you were the 
very most attractive girl she had ever met, and 
that she was going to give another dinner, in your 
honor, very soon.” 

Emma certainly was making a success of her 


i68 


The Great Plan 


entry into Berlin society, and she was glad, for 
upon her own ability to make friends, as well as 
acceptance of her on the Grafin von Hesse- 
Schwerin’s account, depended the realization of 
her suffrage schemes. 

After that evening at the Princess Ruhlen- 
burg’s, the young American heiress who sang that 
“ funny little song ” was constantly in demand 
everywhere,- for opera parties — the opera sea- 
son in Berlin is almost continuous, while theaters 
are taboo for unmarried girls — dinners, and all 
the usual round of social entertainment. The 
Grafin Sigart also took Emma to a number of 
balls and dances where her popularity was enor- 
mous, and she flirted gloriously with the multitude 
of young officers who seemed to be the mainstay 
of those functions. 

The “ Polonaise Frangaise ” and “ Lanciers ” 
recently had been revived in Berlin, and Emma 
had difficulty in disguising her merriment when 
she saw staid matrons of fifty — a woman is 
never too old to dance in Germany — and portly 
oflicers of high rank, promenading ceremoniously 
through these historic steps. It seemed very far 
removed, somehow, from Newport, and she 


The Great Plan 


169 


yearned for home and a good American partner 
who could “ Boston.” 

Ten minute spins without reversing — the Ger- 
man idea of waltzing — with the booted and 
spurred “ Bunten Tuch,” as the wearers of the 
blue uniforms are called, was a novel experience 
to her, and she managed to enjoy herself tremen- 
dously, as she always did wherever she might be. 

The women in the court circle, she found, in 
contrast to those of the middle class, who were 
remarkable for their love of jewelry and lack of 
taste in dress, were as well dressed as any women 
of the same high station in Paris, London, or New 
York, while their knowledge of music and lan- 
guages made her wish that her countrywomen 
thought more about those things. Also they were 
as good horsewomen as they were skaters, Emma 
discovered. The Kentucky girl had to sit her 
horse very straight indeed to prove herself a match 
for them. 

It was while Emma and the grafin were riding 
one morning in the Thiergarten, that they passed 
a young officer with a very red face and a blonde 
moustache, who reined up his horse as he met 
them and bowed in an alarmed sort of fashion. 


The Great Plan 


170 

Emma had a vague idea that she had seen him 
before, but then she had met so many officers 
lately, and those with red faces and blonde mous- 
taches were so plentiful, and her horse had been 
going so fast, she could not feel certain about it. 

“ Who was it? Anyone I know? ” she asked, 
pulling her horse down to a walk and turning to 
her companion. 

“ I don’t know, I ’ve forgotten,” said the 
grafin. “ Why did you stop? Let ’s trot again.” 
And she set off at a great pace. 

But not before the observing Emma had seen 
the blush on her face and had begun to wonder, 
as she followed at a gallop, what there was about 
the incident to cause her friend’s evident con- 
fusion. 

These diversions, together with automobiling 
in the Grunewald, visiting picture galleries and 
shopping, made the days pass pleasantly. Emma 
loved shopping in Berlin, and found in the Leip- 
sigerstrasse a beautiful cameo pin to take home to 
her mother, and in the Wilhelmstrasse a shop 
where the most perfectly delicious pralines 
could be had. It was fun too, always lunch- 
ing out, sometimes just she and Sigart alone, 


The Great Plan 


171 


sometimes with two or three other women, at 
fashionable cafes in the Frledrichstrasse, with 
tea later on at the Kaiserhof. Incidently Emma 
found herself invited with her hostess to 
house parties at this beautiful country residence 
and that, and for motor trips to the Thuringian 
forests. Her responsibility to the Great Plan 
prevented acceptance of many invitations which 
took her out of Berlin, but they pleased her never- 
theless. It proved an increasing popularity, which 
was so necessary as a means to an end — the incul- 
cation of her scheme for boycotting, among these 
kind, glittering, luxurious, aristocratic women who 
were showing her so much courtesy. 

Emma’s only disappointment was that she had 
not seen the Kaiser, in spite of the fact that the 
Grafin Sigart was related to a royal highness and 
went everywhere in the court circle. They told 
her that his Imperial Majesty was spending a 
month on his estate in the Mediterranean at 
Corfu, and would not appear in Berlin until June 
first, when the imperial family went to Potsdam. 
Emma had planned in the event of her encounter- 
ing his majesty to let him hear directly from her- 
self of the plan to incite the women of the highest 


172 


The Great Plan 


circle of society in his kingdom to boycott the men 
until the vote was granted them. 

By the time she had been two weeks away 
from Niedenfels, she came joyfully to the con- 
clusion that the moment was ripe for springing her 
project upon her new friends. 

Accompanied and enthusiastically supported by 
the loyal Sigart, she divulged it first to the Prin- 
cess Ruhlenburg (an American by birth), who 
had entertained her the night of the snubbing of 
the thoughtless anti-Roosevelt brigadier, and who 
had been ever since one of Miss Daingerfield’s 
warmest admirers. That beautiful and brilliant 
lady, whose active mind had not nearly enough to 
keep it employed, and who was suffering from a 
between-seasons fit of ennui, jumped at the oppor- 
tunity for excitement which Emma’s plan offered, 
and at once promised support and allegiance. 
She would “ make boycotting the fashion in the 
court circle,” she said, with a dainty, feminine 
and highbred oath, “ or know the reason why.” 
What is more she would begin her effort that very 
day. 

Emma was satisfied. She knew that a thing to 
succeed with women, has only to be fashionable. 


The Great Plan 


173 


and the princess would have no trouble in making 
the Great Plan that. Two hundred and ninety- 
nine women out of the three hundred that adorned 
the court circle already danced when she played the 
flute, whether it was small hats she advocated or a 
new way to get thin. With an ally like that, of 
high position and power, Emma felt that the thing 
was as good as done. And it was. 


CHAPTER XI 


HEN they heard that the Princess 
Ruhlenburg was advocating and 
backing the new movement, wo- 
man after woman joined its ranks 
and in a week’s time, after ha- 
rangues by the princess, talks by Emma, and a 
number of gay social functions, its numbers 
swelled to about three hundred of Berlin’s 
fairest and most prominent. Emma was de- 
lighted. What difference did it make that at first 
they did not take it seriously; that they took it up 
for the most part as they did any fad, because 
it was new and promised diversion; what did it 
matter that in all probability they would drop it 
as quickly and as unanimously, when they became 
bored? Whatever the spirit in which it was 
done, the effect was as good and as likely to obtain 
the result Emma hoped for, as if all its supporters 
were actuated by the deepest convictions on the 
subject of woman suffrage. 



174 



The Great Plan 


175 


M.atters went on with a rush and a whirl that 
gratified Emma’s highest ambition. Action was 
the order of the day, and in an Inconceivably 
short time the old scheme of things, at least in 
that limited circle of the city’s highest, was com- 
pletely changed. Buildings were leased to form 
clubs where the women could live, and princesses, 
countesses, and ladles of exalted social station 
quietly packed up their numerous belongings and 
without a word of warning to astounded spouses, 
fathers, brothers, and others that the world called 
their “ natural protectors,” left their palaces and 
rich homes to dwell in defiant independence within 
those chaste walls. 

A country club exclusively for women was 
opened in the beautiful environs of the city. 
Some of the dowager members of the “ Berlin 
Boycott League,” as Emma called It — she always 
had to have a name for everything — who owned 
houses and establishments In their own right un- 
encumbered by lords and masters, went so far as 
to dismiss all male servitors and employ women 
to take their places. Ludicrous Indeed were the 
results sometimes, though their friends professed 
to think It a charming novelty to find half a dozen 


176 


The Great Plan 


females in livery ranged in the hall when attending 
an entertainment in such a house, or to see her 
Grace of Y. speeding down the Unter den Lin- 
den with a woman chauffeur at the wheel. 

Other enthusiasts, and these were in the ma- 
jority, for they represented the younger women of 
the organization, took an oath that they would 
travel in no public conveyance which was run by 
a man, and walked the nine or ten miles to the 
suburbs when they wanted an afternoon at the 
country club. At least those of them did who 
did not own automobiles which they could run 
themselves. 

Not content with that, the revolutionists at a 
public meeting held in Frau von Eckhorn’s house, 
a devoutly earnest adherent of the cause, collected 
over a thousand marks with which they had a 
quantity of handbills printed denouncing the in- 
justice of refusing the women the vote, and pro- 
nouncing the rule of mankind as domestic tyrants 
to be at an end. This proclamation was composed 
immediately after stirring speeches by Emma 
and the princess when the doors of Frau von 
Eckhorn’s great ballroom had been finally closed 
on the last member of the society to arrive. 


The Great Plan 


177 


The princess made the opening address and 
Emma had taken up the thread of her remarks, 
concluding with a telling exposition of the need 
for organizing the society and the results which 
the boycott was intended to obtain. Amidst the 
closest attention she described her experiences at 
Castle Niedenfels; of the condition of bondage 
in which she found the hausfrau in that region; of 
the eagerness with which her efforts to rid them 
of their yoke had been met, and finally of the visit 
of the police and their interdiction of the emi- 
gration scheme. With her vivid face changing 
color and expression every moment she related to 
them her feelings on that occasion, how deep her 
discouragement had been, how great her joy when 
she had hit upon this other idea, this variation 
of the “ Great Plan,” the boycott movement in 
Berlin. 

“ All in a moment I saw,” she said, shaking her 
head impressively at her be-plumed and be-jeweled 
audience, “ that we could not gain freedom for 
the slaves of the fields and farms without the co- 
operation of their sisters in the cities,” here the 
sound of glove striking glove interrupted her, and 
a murmur of applause came to her as she stood 


178 


The Great Plan 

on the small stage at one end of the room. “ I 
realized that I had attacked the proposition at the 
wrong end; for although stirring the country- 
side to revolt Is well enough In Its way, Berlin Is 
the seat of government; Berlin contains the Reichs- 
tag, and Berlin won. Is Germany won. Though 
very much less In point of numbers than the Nie- 
denfels Emigration Society, the Berlin Boycott 
League Is fifty times as powerful and has many 
times the Influence, and Is,” here she lowered her 
voice Impressively, and so still was the room that 
every woman heard every word, “ a million times 
nearer the throne. 

“ There is no shadow of reason why women 
should not vote,” Emma went on, warming to her 
work, “ It Is their right, and an essential part of 
democratic government, but the history of the 
world proves that rights have to be conquered. 
Let us not, however, lose sight of the fact that 
the ballot for either men or women is not In Itself 
an end. Political rights are weapons by which 
the will of the majority may be carried out If that 
will Is definite, positive, and Intelligent. Note, 
my friends, that I say the will, not of male human- 
beings, but of the majority r* 


The Great Plan 


179 


She paused and her hearers rustled and mur- 
mured, perhaps to show that they appreciated the 
point, or perhaps because they were beginning to 
feel restive and bored; but all unconscious, 
the orator resumed her subject. “ Why should 
women,” she asked them, “ allow men to make 
laws which govern the education and moral wel- 
fare of their children, which regulate conditions 
that have directly to do with the welfare of their 
households, for which men hold them responsible ? 
Pardon me if I quote what one of the greatest of 
my countrymen has said — ” she looked at them 
deprecatingly and wistfully, for alas, she began 
to see that the will-o’-the-wisp feminine attention 
had begun to go astraying — “ the strongest bond 
of human sympathy outside of the family relation 
should be the one uniting — ” To her surprise 
a burst of vigorous applause interrupted her here. 
She had forgotten that she was not addressing the 
Vassar Girls’ Suffrage Club; that she was speak- 
ing to a German audience, and a fashionable audi- 
ence at that; she forgot too, in her own interest in 
her subject, that a fashionable audience has to be 
amused, that they had come to Frau von Eck- 
horn’s that afternoon mainly for that purpose. 


i8o 


The Great Plan 


The boycott was great fun, Oh, yes I It was aw- 
fully amusing to flout and bully-rag and defy the 
men, but where was the fun in being lectured 
about your duty to your children and about 
the inside principles of woman’s rights? They 
wanted their rights, of course — everybody wants 
them — but it was an awful bore to be told what 
they were. And so they clapped, frivolously, 
good-humoredly, and with no Intention of being 
rude, to signify to Emma that they were tired of 
being serious. 

Someone In the front, near enough for Emma 
to hear what she said, suggested that they all go 
out and have tea at “ Hohne’s,” and a handsome 
young woman with a chinchilla-trimmed coat, and 
a large scarlet straw hat — it was a chilly day for 
all that it was spring — began to call in English 
for the plantation lullaby as sung by Emma which 
had become so popular with them all. 

It was very discouraging and very humiliating. 
Emma had hoped that they really cared a little 
more than that, and she had a lot more to say to 
them, a flight of eloquence yet unlaunched, in which 
she intended to liken the search for feminine free- 
dom to the search for the Holy Grail, and a num- 


The Great Plan 


i8i 


ber of telling facts to add, but she bowed to the 
wave of popular feeling, thus proving herself a 
diplomat of the first order, and with her most 
charming smile wound her speech up short. She 
said it was indeed too long, and as a finale, in re- 
sponse to well-bred calls for it from all directions, 
sang the song they wanted. 

Emma sat down amidst furious hand-clapping, 
and the good humor of the meeting having been 
entirely restored, the audience listened in patience 
to the Princess Ruhlenburg’s outlining of the con- 
tents of the handbills, and made contribution 
toward their publication with a spirit that almost 
amounted to enthusiasm. 


CHAPTER XII 


T first the men, I mean the hus- 
bands, fathers, brothers, and 
sweethearts of the women con- 
' cerned in the affair, took the mat- 
ter apathetically. It was as if 
this astonishing insurrection against the known 
order of things, this revolt against precedent and 
the traditional superiority of man, had acted as 
an anaesthetic upon them, for it was some time 
before they could recover from their bewilderment 
sufficiently to take general action against it. 

They said to themselves, “ Gertrude and Alma 
and Julia and Ermentrude and Sophie will surely 
— will surely — ” here they gave startled looks 
at one another over their spectacles, “ will surely, 
come back. Yes, when they have tired of their 
folly, when the joke ceases to amuse, they surely 
will return to us of their own accord.” And they 
tried to conceal their consternation from one an- 
other and had their rolls and coffee in the morn- 



x 82 



The Great Plan 


183 


Ing, and their two o’clock luncheon all alone and 
pretended that they liked it. Also they tried to 
make believe they liked to have nothing to do in 
the evenings but play “ Skat ” among themselves, 
and that they did not mind having the whole ma- 
chinery of social entertainment at a standstill — 
no opera parties to attend, no dinners, no balls, 
and no week-end gatherings on beautiful estates. 

Secure in their confidence that the deserters 
were not serious in their purpose, and that very 
soon they would be home again, the men stuck it 
out gallantly — for a week. 

But when they found that Ermcntrude and 
Bertha and Alvina did not return, and that they, 
princes and dukes and barons of the realm and 
members of the Reichstag, merchants and com- 
manders in the Imperial army were to be left per- 
manently to the management of households, to the 
care of children, to the entertaining of their 
friends, and, worst of all, to their own company, 
their wrath knew no bounds. 

Rumors of the gay times which the insurgents 
were having among themselves further enraged 
the men, and peremptory summonses were sent to 
the elegant edifices on this fashionable street and 


184 


The Great Plan 


that, which had been turned into residence clubs 
to shelter the mal-contents. Footmen were de- 
spatched to the very doors of these buildings in 
all sorts of coronetted equipages with instructions 
to wait until the erring ladies appeared, when they 
were to inform them that the carriage and their 
lords and masters “ waited.” 

Furious demands for their Immediate return to 
home and wifely duty were made by telephone, 
and pathetic letters were sent imploring them to 
abandon their wickedness, and painting dismal pic- 
tures of lonely husbands and neglected Infants 
left entirely to the care of the “ Spreewalderin,” 
fashionable Germany’s nursemaids. Anguished 
entreaties from banished sweethearts, and indig- 
nant letters of expostulation from stern fathers] 
also were received at the club, but no husband, 
father, sweetheart or brother made his appearance 
In person — and the women laughed to find It so. 
For of all things In this world to a man, his dignity 
is most dear, and no one of them could bring him- 
self to risk public ridicule by a repulse at the door 
of a woman’s club. 

Even the most high emperor was human 
enough to share this trait of mankind, and It was 


The Great Plan 


185 


the fear of ridicule, when he heard in his retreat 
at Corfu of this new movement in behalf of 
woman suffrage, which had followed so close 
upon news of the supression of the Niedenfels 
Suffrage Emigration Society, that kept him from 
crushing out by imperial edict and force of arms 
the curious and unprecedented form of rebellion. 
For how can a government employ armed forces 
against women and keep its dignity? The mili- 
tant suffragettes in England had made the whole 
country ridiculous by inviting that method of pre- 
serving order — the Kaiser hoped Germany might 
be saved from a like necessity. But how to accom- 
plish it? — that was his problem. To be sure, 
there were only three hundred women Involved ; it 
might seem easy enough to quell them, but un- 
fortunately, those three hundred women were 
related to the foremost men in the kingdom, and 
among them were princesses of his own blood and 
family. 

No, most decidedly he could not call upon his 
police to aid him In this crisis. Diplomacy was 
the only thing that could avail in a matter of such 
peculiar delicacy. But the Kaiser was a master- 
hand at that, and did not Immediately give him- 


i86 


The Great Plan 


self trouble to think out his plan of action. 
It was very pleasant in Corfu and he would be 
home in a month, and he did hope by then that 
the women would have tired of the joke and re- 
turned to their homes before violent action on 
the part of the men had brought the matter to 
public notice. 

In the meantime, while the Kaiser was thus 
considering the matter on his estate in the Med- 
iterranean, the Berlin Boycott League was having 
a fearful and wonderful time. To begin with, 
they made a point of cutting all their masculine ac- 
quaintances whenever they met them. Also, in 
order to anticipate any move on the part of their 
masculine relatives to employ force, the great 
ladies were not seen except in carriages and motors 
or on foot in defiant groups. 

As a proof of the extent to which they carried 
the thing a pitiful story was told among indignant 
residents of Berlin, who sympathized strongly 
with the poor persecuted boycotted men, of the 
attempt which a distracted husband made to induce 
his wife to come back and look after their two- 
year-old son. 

“ He won’t let me out of his sight and cries 


The Great Plan 


187 


for you all the time,” asserted the harassed father, 
encountering his wife and three friends as they 
were coming out of a shop on the Friedrichstrasse. 
“ I can’t attend to my affairs any longer — I can’t 
do anything but sit at home and hold his hand I ” 

The wife, it was said, had appeared much 
moved by this touching proof of her child’s de- 
pendence upon her, but knowing that the nurse 
she had left in charge was perfectly efficient, and 
that her mother-in-law had come to her husband’s 
rescue 'and was staying in the house, she resisted 
all efforts to persuade her to return home. Sur- 
rounded and supported in her decision by her three 
friends, the noble lady made her way triumphantly 
and cold-bloodedly (or so the tale was told) into 
her motor and swept away, leaving her husband 
disconsolate and deserted on the pavement. 

Another exciting incident of the kind was re- 
counted in which Helga von Carlepp, the hand- 
some young daughter of the court physician, en- 
countering her angry father just as she was enter- 
ing the Kaiserhof with two friends, had defied him 
to carry out his threat of compelling her by force 
to return to the home in which she was house- 
keeper, and had run the length of the block pur- 


i88 


The Great Plan 


sued by her stout and choleric parent, before a 
passing taxi had rescued her from his clutches. 
This to the edification of an Increasing cortege of 
nondescript admirers collected from the street, 
who kept pace with the participants In the race 
and betted joyously on the result. 

Parties for women only were the rage, and the 
placid citizens of Berlin became accustomed to 
see opera and theater boxes filled with parties of 
beautifully appareled unescorted women. Even 
the restaurants bowed to the custom. What 
could they do? Surely not refuse to serve supper 
to half a dozen at a time of the women of the 
court circle, several of them nearly related to the 
Imperial family? 

Dinners and dances also were given, some at 
private houses, where dowagers and women whose 
husbands were away could manage It, and some at 
the clubs, and each hostess vied with the other In 
making the manless affairs extravagant and gay. 

It was left to the American, Princess Ruhlem 
burg, however, to bear off the palm In the matter 
of novel entertainments. As the palace where 
she lived and everything In It was her own by 
right of the immense sum she had paid to free 


The Great Plan 


189 


it — with the rest of the estate — from debt, she 
had not removed to a club as had the majority, 
when the boycott was declared, but instead had 
served notice upon her poor little husband to 
vacate the premises. And the Prince Ruhlenburg, 
because he both feared and loved his wife, and 
because he was dependent upon her by arrange- 
ment of her shrewd American father for every 
penny he put into his pocket, had no choice but 
to obey. 

The dinner dance — which she had elected to 
give — was to be held in the white salon of the 
palace which occupied the whole front of the 
second floor, and the entire three hundred mem- 
bers of the Berlin Boycott League were asked. 
But the charm of it, the thing that was to make it 
different from other entertainments, the thing that 
lent spice and piquancy to the party, was that it 
was to be a costume affair, and not only that, but 
a costume affair of a certain kind. 

The happy American ingenuity of the Princess 
Ruhlenburg had suggested to her, since flouting 
and ridiculing the other sex was the order of the 
day with the B. B. L., to ask half her guests to 
come as young men and the other half as ballet 


The Great Plan 


190 

girls. This of course necessitated much ex- 
pense in the matter of obtaining costumes, espe- 
cially in the cases of those young women who had 
not been able to beg, borrow, or rent dress 
clothes and who had to visit tailors ; and the bills 
for the frolic made fathers and husbands, to whom 
they were promptly sent, stare in astonishment, 
and tear their hair with rage. 

The great evening came at last. The carriage 
entrance of the princess’s palace on the Kaiserallee 
had been resounding to the roll of wheels and 
the noise of motors for an hour past, and now the 
great white salon on the second floor with its 
dozens of small tables glittering with silver and 
beautiful with flowers, was crowded with guests, 
and the banquet was well under way. But what a 
singular banquet, what an unusual sight the guests 
presented! The tables were filled with slim fig- 
ures arrayed in dress suits, and with long hair 
coiled tightly against high linen collars. Between 
every two of these pseudo men sat a ballet girl. 

It had been understood, of course, that there 
were to be no footmen present at the dinner and 
the princess had kept her word, it was served by 
waitresses. So the women who came as dancers 



“1 have never felt so wicked in all my life” 








t 


I' 




« 








t 






I 




t 


I 







» ' 



The Great Plan 


12L 

had not been less daring in their choice of costume 
than their sisters of coat and trousers. 

Emma marveled at the scene and admired its 
novelty, looking around from her place beside 
SIgart at the princess’s table, with dazzled eyes. 

“ Did you ever In your life see anything like 
It? ” she said, turning In amazement to the Grafin 
von Hesse-Schwerin. SIgart who had come in 
the costume of an officer of cavalry with black 
coat, white riding breeches and tall shiny boots, 
and who looked stunningly handsome for all that 
the uniform was such a close fit, laughed recklessly. 
“ I have never felt so wicked, my little Emma, In 
all my life,” said she. 

The fun waxed fast and furious. Here and 
there a dowager In a uniform, or a young matron 
strutting In , her liege lord’s purloined evening 
clothes, got up and, amidst cheers of approval and 
excitement, proposed toasts to the confusion of 
husbands and fathers, or to the domestic freedom 
of women, or to the end of masculine despotism. 

Songs were started from all over the room, and 
at one table a striking looking girl In a Hussar’s 
uniform, whom Emma observed was the one who 
had called for the plantation melody during her 


192 


The Great Plan 


speech at the Countess Eckhorn’s, mounted a 
chair and began to sing. 

Yes, certainly everyone was having a very good 
time, and it was right at the very height of this 
good time that the singular interruption occurred, 
which before long changed the character of the 
evening from gay to serious. Just as the young 
lady with the smooth, light hair, boyish figure, 
and glorious voice, had finished singing, a strange 
sound from the street outside arrested the atten- 
tion of every guest in the room and caused every 
voice to hush. Though none there had heard the 
sound before, they recognized it at once. It was 
the angry murmur of a mob. 

Several guests, among them Emma and the 
Princess Ruhlenburg, sprang from their seats and 
rushing to the long windows in the middle of the 
room, stepped out on the balcony. They looked 
down wonderingly into the street and saw it filled 
from side to side and end to end with people. 
But what kind of a mob was this? Probably no 
stranger one in the history of the world had ever 
collected before a palace. Instead of the starving 
dirty faces and miserable rags of the work-people 
of Paris who threatened Versailles; of the poor of 


The Great Plan 


193 


St. Petersburg who gathered before the Winter 
palace in the year of Russia’s great famine to 
demand bread of the “ Little Father,” or of the 
hunger-driven rioters in London who threw stones 
at Whitehall till their wrongs were righted, they 
saw clean faces and sleek forms and white shirt 
fronts, high silk hats, and fur overcoats. It was 
a mob of gentlemen accustomed to dwell in luxury. 

A shout went up from the street the minute the 
women appeared on the balcony and instantly 
three or four hundred voices began to chant in 
determined, menacing German — “We want to 
come in I ” The princess turned excitedly to 
Emma. “ Good Heavens I ” she said, “ it ’s our 
revered relatives, the fathers and husbands of 
us all, demanding that they shall be admitted to 
our party! ” 

“ Of course ! ” said Emma in consternation, 
“ they ’re trying to break the boycott, that ’s what 
they ’re doing 1 ” They went to inform the 
others of this unexpected and startling state of 
affairs and while they discussed it and excitement 
ran high, all the time that monotonous chant, 
“ We want to come in 1 We want to come in 1 ” 
continued from outside. 


194 


The Great Plan 


“ Perhaps we ’d better parley with them and 
tell them it ’s no use — they won’t be admitted,” 
said the princess at last. “ I wish they ’d go 
away, it ’s spoiling the fun to have them clamor- 
ing like that every minute, silly old things I ” 

Emma considered a moment. “ I don’t know 
but it would be as well to warn them that we ’re 
not going to pay any attention, that they ’re not 
going to get in,” she said. 

“ So do I. You go. Miss Daingerfield,” said 
the princess. So Emma went. When they saw 
her come out on the balcony and hold up her hand 
for silence the mob of well-dressed men ceased 
their chanting and prepared to listen to what they 
saw was an emissary from the mutinous females 
within the palace. 

The night was clear and mild and the trees in 
the Thiergarten bulked darkly behind them, and 
the light from the palace windows fell on their 
shirt fronts and uplifted faces. Emma almost 
thought as her gaze wandered over the silent 
throng that she recognized Adrian Kimberley 
among them, and wondered sub-consciously what 
he was doing there. 

“ Fellow voters,” she began, in her careful Ger- 


The Great Plan 


195 


man, and her voice was heard to the farthest con- 
fines of the gathering, “ if you really want to come 
to the party there is but one way for you to accom- 
plish it. Write on your visiting cards your prom- 
ises that you will become loyal suffrage support- 
ers and we will welcome you to our dinner-dance 
with — ” “Tears of joy” was the phrase she 
was going to employ but someone interrupted her. 
The princess who had been standing right behind 
her all the time suddenly stepped in front, leaning 
far over the balcony. 

“ With open arms ! ” she finished loudly, taking 
up Emma’s speech. “ Make yourselves passports 
such as my friend describes, and we ’ll welcome 
you with open arms! If not,” she went on, 
“ you ’ll just have to keep on staying outside 1 ” 
And all in a moment as she smiled down on them 
they realized what it was going to mean to them 
to stay as she said “ outside.” 

“Let us in!” they cried appealingly, and it 
was the voice of One Man crying to the One 
Woman, but it had lost for the moment the ring 
of authority and superiority, and had taken on a 
tone of supplication. And the eternal coquette 
— I mean feminine — because she saw them come 


196 


The Great Plan 


closer, drew back, and laughed at them and their 
emotion, and waved her hand mockingly. 

“ Who ’s that knocking at the door, door, 
door? ” she began in a sing-song voice. “ Is that 
you, Sam? Is that you, Jim? You ’re not good- 
looking, so you can’t come in I ” She stopped to 
laugh at the success with which she had rendered 
the old American ditty into German, and then 
leaned over and called in her natural voice, “ At 
least not until you get your tickets ready ! ” Then 
still laughing she left the balcony, followed by 
Emma. 

“ Do you think that was quite wise? To taunt 
them, I mean,” questioned the latter seriously, as 
they stepped back into the salon, which by 
this time had been cleared for dancing and was 
rapidly becoming crowded with youths in dress 
suits and ballet girls waltzing blissfully in happy 
indifference to what had been going on outside. 

“Why not? I just did it for fun,” said the 
princess, shrugging her shoulders and smiling. 

“ Because it might incite them to use violence,” 
Emma replied, “ they might compel us to let them 
come to the party by force! ” 

The princess sobered suddenly. “ That would 


The Great Plan 


197 


be flat,” she admitted, “ humiliation unspeakable ! 
Imagine returning to our homes as our husbands’ 
prisoners ! ” 

“ It would end the boycott, of course,” Emma 
replied, “ and we should have to say good-by to 
the chance of gaining the ballot by that means. 
Let ’s hope they don’t grow really angry.” 

The other woman yawned and stretched her 
beautiful arms above her head. “ Oh, well,” she 
said, changing ground again, “ let them. I don’t 
believe they could get in ! I ’ve had the doors 
and windows on the first floor all locked and 
barricaded and the footmen — ” the princess 
believed that a subordinate position was the 
proper one for man and had not dismissed her 
footmen as so many of her friends had done — 
“ have orders to stay on guard. I don’t believe — 
Mercy! what’s that?” The sound that had 
caused her to break off so abruptly was the dull, 
terrifying boom of exploding dynamite. 

The orchestra ceased playing and the dancers 
stopped waltzing. One and all they stood listen- 
ing so intently you might almost have seen their 
ears prick up. Then another explosion followed 
directly beneath the window where the main en- 


198 


The Great Plan 


trance to the palace was, and after that, the shat- 
tering of glass on stone. 

Every woman in the room screamed, and the 
waitresses came rushing in from the hall terrified 
and disordered. “ Run, your Highnesses ! Run, 
your Ladyships I ” they cried, “ they are battering 
down the doors; the men will soon be in the 
palace I ” 


CHAPTER XIII 


HEN there was consternation In- 
deed. Distracted beings In mas- 
culine attire, emitting fearful 
feminine shrieks, ran this way and 
that, crying madly for cloaks. It 
was the Princess Ruhlenburg’s presence of mind 
and courage that brought order out of panic and 
confusion. 

“ Ruhe I Ruhe I ” she cried, to call them to 
attention, and sprang upon a chair. That voice 
accustomed to command, calmed the frightened 
women and compelled them to listen. “ If we 
let the men come to the party now — ” she went 
on (In German of course) — “the game Is lost 
— the boycott Is broken ! Shall this be, sisters ? ” 
she paused. 

They rallied bravely. “No I Never! ” came 
the stout reply. 

“Then let them find us gone; the dance 
abandoned! To our cars and carriages, friends; 



199 



200 


The Great Plan 


with haste we can escape by the other entrance 
while they are trying to get in the main door ! ” 

She turned and went rapidly toward the door 
at the other end of the banqueting-hall, followed 
by every woman in the room. So great was their 
haste that they did not even go to the cloakroom 
for their wraps and so great was their fear of 
capture by avenging lords and masters that they 
had hardly left the room before the orderly re- 
treat planned by the intrepid princess became a 
rout. Some ran down one corridor and some 
another in their eagerness to escape, and soon the 
brilliantly lit palace was filled with the hurrying 
figures. 

The astonished lackeys encountered in the 
flight stared and stared. What strange butterflies 
had the beautiful chrysalis of rich wrap and man- 
tle evolved? Surely these could not be the three 
hundred women they had admitted into the palace 
not two hours ago? Emma was not frightened. 
She did not have to fear capture for there was no 
one who had either a legal right or that of a rela- 
tive, to capture her, but she had, as instigator of 
the boycott, something of the feeling which a labor 
agitator might have had under the same circum- 


The Great Plan 


201 


stances, and she felt quite as anxious to gain the 
safety of a carriage, or automobile, as any of the 
fugitives. She worried a good deal, too, for fear 
all the women would not escape. 

Somehow or other in the confusion of the re- 
treat, she had lost sight of Sigart and the others, 
and now found herself all alone, running up a 
long corridor in the direction of the carriage en- 
trance to the palace by which she had arrived. 
It was a beautiful wide promenade with crystal 
lights and dark inlaid floors divided in the middle 
by rows of columns of green marble. Emma ad- 
mired it as she ran, but she was startled for a 
moment, as she looked about her, to note that 
she was not alone and that another girl was running 
along on the other side of the hall parallel with 
her. Emma was very much astonished to see, too, 
that the other girl’s costume was the mate to her 
own, and she innocently began to wish that she 
looked as dainty and fairy-like herself, when she 
saw it was nothing but her own reflection in an 
enormous mirror that ran the length of the apart- 
ment ! 

Pleased by this discovery, she stopped and 
looked in the glass with childish glee. To her sur- 


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prise she beheld not only her own image but that of 
a young man in evening dress with tall silk hat, 
running swiftly toward her from the other end 
of the corridor. He had fair hair and an at- 
tractive good-looking face, and he was not Ger- 
man, as she might have expected him to be, but 
American. She cried out in alarm, and turned 
bewildered, to face — Graham Horde. Yes, it 
really was he. 

The shriek that Emma gave then was worthy 
of a tragedienne. She turned short as a polo- 
pony does, on the same spot on which she stood, 
and darted back in the direction from which she 
had just come and in her anxiety to escape, forgot 
to wonder that Graham was without his usual en- 
cumbrance of chain and ball. 

Horde was astonished that she could run so 
fast. He had hard work keeping her in sight 
as she turned a corner and raced through the pic- 
ture gallery and a music room or two, and it 
was not until she reached an upstairs “ lounge,” 
to use the English word, furnished with gorgeous 
pictures and huge brocaded chairs, that he caught 
up with her. There she stopped suddenly, just 
as he was really beginning to think he would never 


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catch her, she had had such a tremendous head 
start, snatched a velvet cover from a gilt table, 
though the action sent a valuable vase headlong 
to the floor, and threw it around her ballet girl 
costume. 

“ How dare you ! ” she cried, confronting him 
with chin In the air and blazing eyes. 

For once Graham Horde did not laugh, though 
he might well have done so, coming to an abrupt 
halt as he did before this astonishing figure of 
comedy draped In a tablecloth, with hauteur 
so absurdly out of keeping with Its appear- 
ance. Instead he stared at her for a moment 
without speaking, and If Emma had not been so 
shaken by her surprise at seeing him when she had 
thought him miles away, a prisoner In Nleden- 
fels, and by anger at his pursuit of her, she might 
have seen that there was something very unusual 
In his expression, something sobering and terri- 
fying. 

“ Stop staring at me,” she said sharply. 

“ I ’m not staring at you,” he exclaimed indig- 
nantly, and came close up to her and took her 
roughly by her white round arm. You little 
idiot,” he said, “ I Ve been looking for you every- " 


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where. Don’t you know what all this monkey 
business has resulted in? ” 

Tears came to the prideful eyes of the young 
girl — no one ever before had taken Emma Lee 
Daingerfield roughly by the arm; but she heard 
herself answer him meekly, much to her surprise, 
“ No, Graham, I don’t.” 

** The palace caught fire In the bombardment,” 
he said simply. “ It ’s on fire now — come on, 
we must get out.” 

“ Oh-e-e-e — ” cried Emma, opening her eyes 
wide In terror, and without more ado she put her 
arm In his and they hurried down the hall. 

“ I suppose you know you were n’t going In the 
right direction for the carriage entrance?” he 
said. “ That ’s the only reason I found you. 
All of the others got out long ago. Very few of 
the men ran after them, even. They were too 
busy with the fire.” 

“You know the way out, don’t you?” asked 
Emma, panting a little and leaning more heavily 
on his arm. She was very tired. 

“ Oh, sure I ” he said confidently, “ instinct tells 
me it ’s this way ! ” and he turned another corner. 
But It was not at all, and when half a dozen more 


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turns failed to disclose the stairway he was search- 
ing for, he began to look very sober. 

“You’ll surely find it, won’t you, Greggy?” 
asked Emma imploringly, stumbling over the table 
cover which she still held around her as an impro- 
vised cloak. 

“ Of course,” he answered stoutly, though his 
heart misgave him; “now, don’t you worry, 
dear!” 

“ It reminds me,” said Emma, slightly cheered, 
as they hurried through another suite of gorgeous 
rooms, “ of a nightmare I used to have at home. 
I used to dream I was locked up in some big de- 
partment store and had to spend the night there.” 

Horde forced a laugh. “That was funny!” 
he said, “ come on, let ’s try this passage 1 ” But 
that passage led them to nothing that at all re- 
sembled a stairway. The palace was enormous 
and the number of rooms that looked alike was 
confusing. The young man began almost to be- 
lieve they never would find the way downstairs. 

“ Oh, dear! ” said Emma, when they had hur- 
ried on in silence a while longer. “ I ’m so 
tired ! ” and a loud sob escaped her. She was 
so little, and tripped so pitifully that Graham’s 


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heart was wrung; he was apparently failing her 
so miserably. 

“ I ’m sorry, darling,” he said — he had a very 
moving way of saying “ I ’m sorry.” “But if 
you ’ll promise not to cry, please God, I ’ll find 
the staircase yet! ” 

But at that moment just as he made this hope- 
ful speech a whiff of something burning came to 
him down a long, blue corridor. 

“ Smoke 1 ” said Emma, turning a little pale. 

“ Yes,” said Graham calmly. “ Smoke, but 
here also is the stairway,” and he turned in the 
other direction confidently. He had not the re- 
motest idea that he spoke the truth, but as it 
happened — perhaps his prayer of the moment be- 
fore had been answered — he was right. Behind 
a screen of palms on the landing sweeping down 
from a loggia was a broad marble stairway. They 
rushed down it hand in hand. 

“ Let me see,” said Graham, pausing on the 
last step to take his bearings, “ here are windows, 
there must be a door near, a side door, I imagine, 
this corridor does n’t look as fancy as the others. 
Yes, there it is up there by that statue.” At this 
moment from the big square lower loggia to the 


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right, with every appearance of haste and anxiety, 
came Adrian Kimberley. 

“ Ha ! ” he exclaimed, halting at sight of the 
two on the stairs, “ I Ve been looking for you 
everywhere, Emma — ” the words by this time had 
a familiar sound to the girl. “ So you ’re safe ! ” 
He rushed to her and took her hands. 

“ Yes, she ’s safe,” said Horde coldly, and 
Emma said, “ Yes, thanks. Cousin Adrian, I ’m 
all right. Graham is looking after me.” It was 
the bare truth and she did not mean it for a re- 
pulse, but it had that effect. The older man 
dropped her hands at once. 

“ The carriage entrance is at the other end of 
the hall,” he said. “ I Ve just been there. Come 
on and I ’ll show you the way.” But the younger 
man had not so soon forgotten the day at Nieden- 
fels when Kimberley had appeared to such ad- 
vantage, in that affair of the police officers, and 
he did not intend now to hand over his spoil so 
easily. He had rescued Emma from whatever 
peril there was and he didn’t propose to share 
that happiness with anybody. 

“ I think we can get out by this side door, 
thanks,” he said. “ Come on, Emma.” But 


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Miss Daingerfield observed suddenly that there 
was blood on Kimberley’s left temple. 

“You’ve hurt yourself?” she said with con- 
cern. 

“ Nothing to signify,” Kimberley replied, “ a 
bit of glass from one of the windows the explosion 
smashed,” but he smiled gratefully at her with his 
rather pale lips. 

“ I ’m so sorry ! ” began Emma, hanging back 
from Graham’s arm. 

“ Come on! ” said Horde again, “ we ’d better 
get out,” and as she reluctantly followed, he re- 
flected with bitterness upon the strangeness of girls, 
who never were satisfied with the attention of one 
man if another was about. When they had 
opened the door a green light above their heads 
showed that It led out into a side alley, and they 
saw with profound thankfulness that somebody’s 
carriage was waiting there, a beautiful little 
brougham with a gold coronet on its purple and 
white door. They stepped eagerly out into the 
cool April night, hardly able to believe their good 
fortune. The horses were jumping and dancing 
about as If they suspected that there was fire In 
their near neighborhood. 


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209 


“ Drive to the Grafin von Hesse-Schwerin’s,” 
said Graham authoritatively, and made to open 
the door. 

“ But this is the carriage of the Baroness 

P . I was told to wait here,” replied the 

coachman in fair English. 

“ It ’s all right,” Horde answered. “ You are 
to take us, and keep the horses still, will you?” 
The excitement of the evening began to tell on 
him. With that he opened the door and helped 
Emma in — cried once more “ to the Grafin von 
Hesse-Schwerin’s at once,” and sprang in after 
her. 

The coachman without further protest, either 
awed by the American’s authority or convinced 
that his mistress by that time must be safely on 
her way home, and that the vicinity of fire was no 
place for him, let his horses go and dashed rap- 
idly away down the alley. 

Graham and Emma never did know what hap- 
pened to the Baroness P that night, but as 

they afterwards heard that the fire was put out 
before much damage was done, and that all the 
women escaped from the palace without accident 
and uncaptured by irate husbands and fathers. 


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they concluded that their action in borrowing her 
carriage had not done much harm. 

“ And now will you please tell me how you got 
here? ” demanded Emma, when they found them- 
selves safely in the carriage and on their way to 
the Grafin Sigart’s, “ and how you escaped from 
Niedenfels, and — for mercy’s sake — ” here she 
looked down at his ankle in the greatest surprise 
as she missed for the first time its usual adorn- 
ment — where are your chains ? ” He looked at 
her a little apologetically, but brimming over with 
mischief. 

“ My dear girl,” he said, “ that was all a farce, 
that prisoner business; didn’t you guess?” She 
sat bolt upright on the luxurious seat of the coupe. 

“ Guess? ” she repeated. “ Guess what? 
You know I did n’t guess anything.” 

He cocked his head on one side in a way that 
had become dear to her, it was so characteristic 
of him, but which irritated her now. 

“Well, nothing much,” he said, “except that 
those chains and things you and Miss Simms 
selected from the castle armory for me with so 
much loving care must have been going on five 
hundred years old, and were so weak that any 


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211 


jay could have broken them. I discovered that 
in my second week at the castle.” 

“ And did any jay break them? ” she inquired 
frigidly. 

“ Yes,” he said, “ don’t get mad, but I detached 
that confoundedly heavy ball from the chain and 
in its place put a big black bowling ball that Hein- 
rich brought from the village for me.” 

“And why did you do that?” she Inquired, 
controlling her surprise. 

He grinned. “ So I could enjoy life,” said he. 
“You didn’t Imagine it was any fun dragging 
fifty pounds of Iron around with me wherever 1 
went, did you? ” 

“ Don’t be silly,” she replied. “ I meant why 
did you take the trouble to put the wooden one 
on? If you could break the chain, why didn’t 
you escape, and go back to your old newspaper? ” 

“ For one reason,” he said, “ because they 
didn’t want me back. I received word just a 
week after I had been at NIedenfels that they 
would dispense with my further services.” She 
whirled round. “The horrid things! Why, I 
should like to know? ” He smiled at her Indig- 
nation. “ Oh, well, you know,” he told her, “ a 


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fellow has to expect something like that if he 
does n’t keep his word. I said I ’d be back on the 
next steamer and I never even sent ’em word I 
could n’t do it. I was n’t able to, of course, but 
editors never wait for explanations. If a man 
does n’t show up in time with his assignment, they 
just get a new man, that ’s all.” 

“ And a new story? ” said Emma. “ I don’t see 
why the story is n’t just as good, if you wrote 
it up and sent it in now? ” She actually seemed 
to be urging him to do what she had put him in 
a dungeon for saying he would do, not so many 
weeks ago ! 

He looked at her a little bewildered, unable to 
comprehend her change of view-point. “ No,” 
he said tolerantly, “ thanks for thinking of it, but 
I could n’t do that. You see the time ’s gone by. 
An editor wants what he wants when he wants it. 
By this time he has fifty stories just as novel to 
fill that particular Sunday page.” She was silent 
a moment, apparently pondering something. 
“ What I still don’t understand,” she said, “ is 
why, under those circumstances, when you were n’t 
a reporter any longer and you knew you could n’t 
do me any harm by writing me up, you did n’t tell 


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213 


me, so that you could go free ? And then, too, you 
have n’t explained yet why you did n’t break your 
chains the minute you found you could, and get 
away? ” 

He looked her in the eyes. “ Only one reason 
why I did n’t do both things,” he said — and his 
voice grew grulf and earnest — “ I was afraid you 
might not let me stay at the castle unless I was a 
prisoner, and I — I wanted to stay.” But she 
would n’t understand. 

“ Still, I don’t see,” she said. “ If you liked 
being a prisoner, why did you escape at all and 
come down here? ” 

He seized one of her hands suddenly. “ Little 
stupid!” he said, leaning toward her ardently, 
“ what was the good of being a prisoner after you 
had left the castle? ” 

Fortunately, or so Emma thought, at that in- 
stant they reached the Grafin von Hesse-Schwer- 
in’s house in the Dorotheenstrasse. If they had 
not she felt sure Graham would have kissed her. 

When the door closed upon him at last and left 
her to her beating heart and her sense of the de- 
licious peril of that moment in the carriage, she 
heard Sigart’s voice softly calling from the second 


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landing to inform her of her own safe arrival not 
twenty moments sooner, and of the presence on 
the newel-post of a telegram for Miss Dainger- 
field. 

Emma, with the assurance that she would be 
up in a minute, paused on the last step of the 
great carved staircase to read her telegram. It 
was from Juliet. 

“ Return at once,” it read; “ something serious 
has happened. I must have your advice.” 


CHAPTER XIV 


IE Rhine flowed calmly beneath 
the distant battlements of Nie- 
denfels, and hill and valley round 
about the castle were tinged with 
May-time green. Emma was 
\ again and as the motor entered 
the Schlosshof and she saw old Heinrich bowing 
and smiling by the drawbridge, she felt a quick 
jump of her heart almost as If she had just passed 
through the tall, white gates of that Kentucky 
plantation which was her home. 

She was not alone, needless to say, for Mr. 
Graham Horde had accompanied her on the trip 
back as SIgart also had done. The grafin’s de- 
votion to her friend had not been altogether pleas- 
ing to the grafin’s fiance, who had Insisted upon fol- 
lowing them back In his big black touring car. He 
seemed to feel that his beloved was In need of 
his protection while she dwelt among the Philis- 
tines, or, In other words, with her wild American 



glad to see it 


215 



2i6 


The Great Plan 


friends. At the same time he complained bitterly 
of the necessity for spending another week in the 
small cottage near the castle where he had found 
lodging before, which did not afford him exactly 
the kind of fare to which his highness was ac- 
customed. 

The girls got out in haste and looked eagerly 
around. Where was Juliet? It was strange she 
was not at the door to greet them. Emma hur- 
ried into the hall and called loudly to her lieuten- 
ant. A very small voice answered her and Juliet 
came creeping from the library. Her face was 
quite altered, it looked so grave. 

“What is the matter?” said Emma, seizing 
her by the shoulder, while SIgart, suspecting 
trouble, took out her pocket handkerchief and 
allowed her lip to tremble grievously. 

“ I Ve something very dreadful to tell you,” 
Miss Simms said bravely, “ It was n’t my fault, 
really, Emma, but, oh, Emma — I” she stopped 
and clasped her hands. 

What Isn’t your fault? What do you 
mean?” said Emma, bewildered and half fright- 
ened. 

“ I don’t know how you ’ll stand it,” continued 


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217 


the poor little bearer of bad news, “ but the pris- 
oner, Mr. Horde, has escaped I” She hid her 
face with her arm and Emma looked at her a full 
half minute before the meaning of it all burst 
upon her and she realized that the serious thing 
that had happened, which her friend’s telegram 
had mentioned, was nothing more or less than 
Graham’s escape from the castle I 

Smiling Inwardly In anticipation of Juliet’s sur- 
prise when she saw what she should see, she 
wasted no time in words — merely stepped to the 
open door and beckoned Graham, who was out- 
side fussing with the machine. 

The next instant Juliet, looking up to see how 
Emma was taking the flight of their erstwhile 
captive, whom Juliet had grown to suspect was 
more to her friend than she was willing to 
admit — saw in the doorway a tall young man 
in a gray suit and a tie of such a lovely hue 
that it could only have been chosen by the young 
southerner who had so lately been an inmate of 
the castle. He smiled at her, his old engaging 
smile, and Juliet gave a shriek of joy. “ Oh,” 
she cried, “ Mr. Horde 1 I thought you ’d run 
away I ” 


2i8 


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The Niedenfels house-party having thus joy- 
ously assembled again, and Graham’s little com- 
edy with the chains upon his leg and the fact that 
there was no further need of his imprisonment 
having been explained to Sigart and Juliet, they 
were not much surprised to have the owner of 
Castle Reichenstein appear among them as they 
were having tea. 

“ It was pretty mean,” Kimberley accused 
Emma, when they had finished welcoming the new 
arrival, “ to run back to the Rhine like that with- 
out telling me. I ’m as fond of Reichenstein as 
you are of Niedenfels. If it had n’t been for my 
calling in the Dorotheenstrasse just after you had 
left I would not have known.” 

Emma explained that the urgency of Juliet’s 
telegram had made her forget everything but her 
desire to reach the castle as fast as possible. 

“ Of course,” he said, placated, “ but now that 
we ’re all here again let ’s not go back for a while; 
let ’s have a real house-party ” — he looked around 
on them all with his gayest smile — in celebra- 
tion, shall we say,” he eyed Graham humorously, 
“of our late prisoner’s release?” They cho- 
rused unanimous approval. 


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219 


“ Good,” he said, “ the weather ’s so fine now, 
we must have picnics and rides and dances. And 
I ’ll invite some people to stay with me, and we ’ll 
have a bully good time.” 

“ Yes, but don’t plan for too long. Cousin 
Adrian,” Emma said; “you know I have to be 
back in Berlin before the end of the week. I 
have to keep the boycott going until we accom- 
plish our object.” 

“ Oh, yes I ” he agreed, “ but don’t let ’s think 
of it now I No one wants to think of work on 
such a day I ” He walked to the edge of the par- 
apet and looked off to where the Rhine leaped 
and sparkled in the afternoon sun. “ Who wants 
to go for a ride in the launch? ” he said, turning 
back toward them, “ there ’s just time before din- 
ner.” 

Sigart and Juliet said they would love to and 
sprang to their feet, but Emma confessed that she 
and Graham had planned a stroll. Kimberley’s 
face darkened. “ You can stroll after dinner,” he 
said, “ come on and see the sunset on the water, 
we ’ve been a long time away from it.” 

Horde spoke: “Thanks awfully, Kimberley,” 
he said, “ but the sunset is going to look pretty 


220 


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good to us up on that crag,” he pointed across 
the valley. 

Kimberley turned without a word more and 
smiled pleasantly at the others as they followed 
him down from the terrace. But there was bit- 
terness in his heart. Emma had been so nice to 
him in Berlin, always wearing the flowers he had 
sent her and asking for his escort during those 
first days when she was making acquaintance with 
her new friends in the court circle, and had ap- 
parently been so grateful to him for his assistance 
in that respect — he knew so many people — that 
he had almost begun to hope, almost dared to 
think — Ah I what was it that he had dared to 
think? And here she was throwing him over for 
Graham. What she saw in that young fool he 
could n’t imagine. As for Emma, the minute he 
had left some contrariety of her feminine nature, 
or was it really her tender heart? made her regret 
that she had refused to go with him. 

“We’ve hurt his feelings,” she said, turning 
to Graham with wide eyes. 

“ Well,” he said, “ you ’d have hurt mine I can 
tell you, if you had gone with him. Which do 
you hate to hurt the most? ” 


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221 


She refused to say and instead ran to the edge 
of the terrace. “ Good-by,” she called to the 
three figures way down the path. “ Ask me some 
other time, will you, Adrian? ” And Kimberley, 
sensing that this was meant to make up to him 
for her refusal to come — she only called him by 
his first name, without the “ cousin,” on special 
occasions — waved his hat joyfully and shouted 
back his protestations that he surely would. 

But you cannot conciliate two antagonistic men 
in each other’s hearing. When the young girl 
turned back from the parapet it was to find a very 
sulky Graham. 

“ It ’s a wonder you did n’t go with him if you 
wanted to so much ! ” he said. 

She took his arm and clung to it and put her 
sweet young face very near his breast, and looked 
up at him so friendly-wise, so cajolingly, that his 
hurt feeling wholly vanished even before she 
spoke. 

“ Oh, Greggy,” she said, “ please don’t be cross. 
I did n’t mean anything, only I ’m sorry for poor 
Cousin Adrian, he ’s had an awfully disappointing 
life, and he ’s very sad and lonely I ” 

He squeezed her arm, ashamed. “ That ’s all 


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right,” he said, “ I was a jay to mind. Now 
where shall we go? ” 

“ I tell you,” said Emma, wriggling away from 
him and looking up at the tower of the castle 
that was just above them, “ up there I ” She 
pointed to the little balcony that opened out of 
one of the windows. “ It ’s ever so much higher 
than the hill, and not half so far to go, and I ’m 
tired!” 

The idea was a good one; the view, Graham 
knew, must be superb from that balcony, and he 
would have consented to the proposal without a 
second’s hesitation if he had not had a reason 
for declining, about which Emma knew nothing. 

The balcony in question hung from the twin 
tower of that one where the Count Palatine dwelt 
in fancied security from intrusion, and Graham, 
as well as Juliet, had discovered the fact of the 
young man’s residence there, although the latter 
still thought herself the only possessor of the 
secret. It had happened in this way: Graham 
had gone out for a walk late one evening after 
Emma and her two friends had gone to bed; he 
had had a particularly happy time with Emma and 
felt the need of a walk and a pipe in which to 


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223 


think it over. While strolling up and down the 
old tournament ground where former counts 
of the palatine had been wont to practice their 
prowess in arms, he saw, running across the green 
sward in the bright moonlight a figure which 
limped as It ran and had a package under Its arm 
— and. Incredible as It had seemed at the time, 
he had recognized a man whom he had known 
very well at Harvard but had not seen since their 
graduation six years ago. Graham had been 
standing In shadow himself and the other had 
almost run Into him before he saw him; their 
recognition of each other had been simultaneous 
and joyful. 

“ Graham Horde ! ” the one had said, and 
“ Jim Holyoke I ” exclaimed the other. Expla- 
nations of their respective reasons for being at 
NIedenfels had followed, and as his friend Hol- 
yoke’s business there seemed of more Importance 
than Miss Daingerfield’s, which he had never pre- 
tended to take seriously, Graham had been easily 
bound over to secrecy. For this reason it was that 
he hesitated when Emma made her Innocent re- 
quest that they should sit out on that lofty little 
balcony; he feared that discovery of the Count 


224 


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Palatine’s hiding place might follow, as the tower 
that contained it was hardly twenty feet from the 
other and its window in full view from the balcony. 
What if the refugee should be sitting there when 
they appeared? 

But the risk was one that had to be taken. No 
amount of tactful urging that the hilltop was the 
more attractive place from which to see the sunset 
could persuade Emma to give up her balcony. 
Luckily when they reached it, at the end of a long 
and arduous climb, he saw after a swift apprehen- 
sive glance at the opposite tower, that it was not 
possible to see into the little room at its top which 
Juliet had entered that day, and which she did 
not dream was known to Graham also. Graham 
found that his friend after all was In no danger 
of discovery. Needless to say, the young soli- 
tary did not allow himself the luxury of looking 
out of his window in the daytime ! 

The view was magnificent enough to reward 
them for the climb, and Emma was delighted. 
Deep rose clouds were bearing up toward the op- 
posite banks of the Rhine, wrapping the Rom- 
anesque towers of Reichenstein In soft effulgence 
and lending It the aspect of a dream-castle, where 


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225 


might abide shadowy beings of the legendary 
world. 

Directly below them the hillside fell away in a 
sheer descent of some hundred feet or so and then 
continued in a more gradual decline, interspersed 
with rocks already covered with verdure. Above 
them on the river they could see the wooded vil- 
lage of Namedy backed by mountains blue with 
distance, and below, the twin spires of Anderach 
barely visible where the stream lost itself in the 
horizon. 

The air was transparently serene and clear, 
and enchantingly warm. The very breath of con- 
tentment fell upon the young man and the girl as 
they seated themselves on the railing and looked 
out over the scene so that not a word escaped 
them — only sighs. 

How could one think that they would so soon 
be plunged into heated argument? Yet it was 
so. 

“ And to think,” said Emma, when they had 
been silent a long time, “ that it ’s to a country 
as beautiful as this we ’re bringing the gospel of 
equal rights ! Oh, I ’m so glad I ” 

“ It does n’t make the country any more beau- 


226 


The Great Plan 


tiful, does it?” Horde said. Not with any real 
intention of starting an argument, but just idly, 
without consideration. But Emma took fire at 
once. 

“ Why, Graham, of course it does,” she said, 
flushing. “ Would n’t it make it more beautiful 
to you if you knew that all the women in all those 
little towns that we see, were happy and con- 
tented? ” 

“ They are now,” he said. “ Do you mind if I 
smoke? ” 

She paid no attention to the last query. “ How 
do you know? ” she said quickly, facing him. 
“ You just say that because you ’re a man and you 
think that women ought to be happy and con- 
tented if men are kind enough to govern their 
country and order their lives for them I ” The 
battle was on and without meaning to at all they 
had started one of their frequent quarrels on the 
subject of equal suffrage. 

He recognized this fact with a certain sense of 
enjoyment. It was great fun to tease Emma 
about her hobby, he had had to abstain so long 
while he was prisoner that now he was going to 
have a good time. He lit his cigarette and leaned 


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227 


back against the castle with one leg on the stone 
rail. 

“ My dear girl,” he said, in the patronizing 
tone that Emma particularly detested, “ the mis- 
take you make is in exaggerating the necessity 
for the enfranchisement of the little dears. They 
honestly have n’t half the kick coming you imagine 
they have. They ’ll get more out of trusting to 
the chivalry of mankind than they ever will out 
of the vote.” 

‘‘ Graham I ” said Emma, in the tone she was 
accustomed to use when she wanted to bring him 
up short, and going over to stand close by him, 
with her hands thrust deep in the pockets of her 
light wrap, “ don’t let me ever hear you talking 
about chivalry ! It ’s perfectly true that chivalry 
may make some men humane to women, but our 
man-made laws do not prevent other men from 
being unkind and unfair to women, and besides, 
don’t you see? It isn’t favors we want, it’s 
justice I ” 

He clapped his hands softly. “Hear! 
Hear! ” he said. 

She smiled reluctantly and continued, “ I know 
you don’t really care, but it ’s so just the same. 


228 


The Great Plan 


Perhaps you did n’t know it, but this contest be- 
tween men and women has been going on longer 
in this country than just the last few years. In 
ancient Germany it was a struggle for supremacy 
— the supremacy of the priestess mother over the 
tribal father — and the women were defeated, 
completely subjected. Today,” continued Emma, 
while the stupefied Graham, who had never heard 
her so academic, allowed his cigarette to go out, 
“ it ’s a struggle for woman not to surpass man, 
but to take her place by his side and rule on equal 
terms.” 

“ I see, well stated,” said Horde. “ But, look 
here, don’t you see that women are n’t fitted to 
rule on equal terms with man? That ’s just the 
trouble.” 

“ No, I don’t,” she said promptly. “ I know 
and believe that women are more than able to 
help administer the government under which they 
live I” 

“ Proof, please.” 

“What proof have you that they aren’t? 
Read history. See what they do In America. Be- 
sides,” she went on impatiently, “ it ’s not a ques- 
tion of fitness, after all, it ’s a question of justice.. 


The Great Plan 


229 


Fit or not, they Ve the right to vote. Who ever 
questioned whether men were fit? ” 

“No one — no question about it,” he said tri- 
umphantly. 

“ Exactly,” more triumphantly from Emma, 
“ man bases his claim to the ballot on the natural 
right to govern himself. The same argument ap- 
plies with equal force to women. To deny woman 
the ballot ” — in her excitement Emma’s voice was 
becoming high and shrill and her cheeks a beau- 
tiful pink — “because of her sex Is to repudiate 
her right and claim as a human being. It Is 
to — ” 

She stopped suddenly In mid-harangue to stare 
at Graham. He had arisen and was looking 
about him as if In search of something. 

“What Is It?” she asked curiously. 

“ Nothing,” he said, “ I was only looking for 
a stump for you to stand on.” 

She rushed at him and began to pound him. 
“ Oh, you tiresome tease I ” she said. 

“ Well, you know,” he laughed gayly, “ I don’t 
mean to Irritate you, but you can’t guess how In- 
congruous It Is to hear you throw it Into me like 
that about suffrage when you have on such a con- 


230 


The Great Plan 


foundedly pretty gown and don’t look any more 
like a suffragette than the cat does ! ” 

“ You have a man’s Idea of a suffragette, 
that ’s why,” said Emma, but she looked pleased, 
and Graham, seeing that, took her arm and they 
went to the balustrade and looked down at the 
river again. 

“ I bet I could hang you over by your wrists,” 
said he, in a fit of Inconsequence, “ and not drop 
you.” 

‘‘ Dare you I ” laughed Emma, catching his 
mood and backing away. The show of resistance 
excited him and he made a sudden dart at her and 
caught her by her two wrists. She felt like a doll 
in his powerful hands. 

“ Are you afraid? ” he laughed. She made a 
face. “Never!” she cried. He lifted her up 
and lowered her down over the rail. “ Now I ’ve 
got you I ” he cried, glorying in the feel of her 
utter dependence upon him. 

It was a foolish thing to do ; of course he was 
more than able to do It, and of course there was not 
a chance in a million that he would have dropped 
her, nevertheless It was taking a risk and subject- 
ing them both to strain. It was all over in a 


The Great Plan 


231 


minute and Emma barely had time to gasp before 
he had pulled her back to safety again, but for all 
that she had been frightened. That was rather 
a dreadful sensation, even if it had been a pleas- 
ant one for him, to feel herself swinging over that 
sheer gulf in thin air. Suddenly she found tears 
in her eyes. “You shouldn’t have done it, it 
was cruel,” she said, with trembling lips. 

He saw that she was pale and that he had 
frightened her. A terrible pang of self-reproach 
came over him, the feat that he had so rejoiced 
in as a proof of his great strength, that was meant 
to prove to her how entirely she could trust to 
it — became suddenly a black and monstrous deed. 
Good heavens, big brute that he was, he had used 
his man’s strength to frighten a girl, and a girl 
that he cared all the world fori Only one act 
seemed reparation enough. He stared at her a 
second begging forgiveness with his eyes, and then 
before she could half comprehend what he meant 
to do, swung himself over the balcony and hang- 
ing on by his hands, let himself slowly down 
so that he too swung over that terrible abyss. 
Emma shrieked, half in fright, half in satisfac- 
tion, as she realized the motive for the act, then 


232 


The Great Plan 


she came to the rail and begged him to come back. 
“ Don’t stay so long,” she cried, “ you ’ll be 
tired.” 

He saw that he had made expiation and an- 
swered joyously. 

‘‘ No, I won’t,” looking up from between his 
long arms stretched to the railing top, “ I Ve often 
hung like this in the gym for minutes at a time. 
But I ’m coming up. I only wanted to — ” His 
voice ceased. Its owner at that moment had un- 
fortunately taken a glance down at the shore hun- 
dreds of feet below, the castle walls angling down 
after a perpendicular drop of a dozen yards or 
more. 

“Why don’t you come?” asked Emma, again 
peering over a little anxiously, although she really 
had the utmost confidence in his muscle. 

“ I can’t,” he said in a muffled voice without 
looking up. 

“Can’t?” she repeated, “you’re fooling, 
are n’t you, Greggy? ” Still she was unalarmed, 
though she might have noticed how white the 
knuckles on the rail had grown. 

“ No, dear,” he said, “ I ’m not fooling this 
time ” — he showed her a desperate, pale face. 



With the inspiration of despair she leaned down, 
near him as she could 




The Great Plan 


233 


“ The fact is, I feel dizzy.” He laughed a little, 
inane, silly laugh. 

Emma did not scream. The case was too 
grave for that. Only a horrible cold stone filled 
her heart all up and stayed there. Project after 
project for aiding him flew like lightning through 
her brain, but not one was feasible. If she had 
a rope — but she had no rope; if someone were 
near — by the time she had brought someone up 
to that inaccessible place Graham would have let 
go. If she were only strong enough to give him 
a hand? But she was not strong enough to have 
dragged a man half his size up, let alone his six 
feet two. 

With the inspiration of despair she leaned 
down, as near him as she could get. “ Ah, now, 
Greggy darling,” she said, “ don’t be a quitter and 
lose your nerve ! If you ’ll stop playing scared 
and climb up here instantly, I ’ll,” she smiled di- 
vinely right into his agonized eyes,“ I ’ll marry 
you tomorrow I ” The blood came racing back 
to his face and every muscle and sinew tightened 
as his man’s pride responded to her appeal to his 
courage, and his man’s heart responded to that 
glorious promise. 


234 


The Great Plan 


“ You bet your life I ’ll come! ” he said, and 
the next instant was on the balcony in safety, with 
Emma clinging to him and sobbing aloud. Need- 
less to say when they had grown calm enough to 
think coherently and he understood that the glo- 
rious promise was a polite fib, Invented on the spur 
of the moment to save his life, he did not hold 
her to it. 

But he did not altogether lose by the Incident, 
for the memory of the kiss he received upon re- 
gaining the balcony stayed by him for many a 
day. 


CHAPTER XV 


HAT night Emma was awakened 
from a sound sleep by Juliet’s 
hand shaking her and Juliet’s 
voice In her ear. “Wake up!” 
It said. “Wake up, Emma!” 
not exactly frightened, but excited. 
Emma roused hurriedly. “What Is It?” she 
said; “ what ’s the matter now? ” The light was 
turned on and she saw that her friend was fully 
dressed and very wide awake. 

“ The strangest thing has happened,” said Miss 
Simms, “ you won’t believe me — you never 
believe In ghosts ” — her voice had a little tri- 
umphant ring, “ but the Count Palatine Otho and 
all his knights — I mean their ghosts, of course — 
are dining In the banqueting-hall ; they ’ve come 
back to haunt the place you know, just as It said 
they did In the legend.” 

Emma was fully awake but she could not quite 
grasp what the other girl was trying to say. 

235 



The tone was 


236 


The Great Plan 


“What legend?” she asked bewilderedly. “I 
don’t understand what you mean.” 

“ You know, the one about the Count Otho 
returning from the crusade to find his bride In a 
convent, that I read to you on the terrace that 
day. They Ve come back to haunt the place. 
Oh, Emma, do hurry and dress and come and 
see ! ” 

Emma dressed. “ How do you know they ’re 
there? ” she asked with an almost hysterical laugh, 
it seemed so absurd to be taking this Incredible 
tale seriously. 

“ I could n’t sleep, and I heard sounds of sing- 
ing and shouting In the building across the court, 
and I went over to see what It was and there was a 
little balcony overhanging the banqueting-hall, 
where the noise came from, and I climbed up and 
looked In, and there they were, the Crusaders ! ” 

Against her better judgment Emma was per- 
suaded that Juliet was not out of her mind or 
dreaming, and that she was telling the truth. 

The two girls hurried over to the Otho’s Bau 
where the banquetlng-hall was, stopping only to 
call SIgart by the way. 

The little balcony overhanging the great hall 


The Great Plan 


237 


was there just as Juliet had said, the stair that led 
to it opened from another room and they were 
quite unobserved as they crept up into the place of 
espionage, which doubtless had been used for the 
same purpose by many a dame of olden time who 
was only permitted to observe, and not to share, 
her lord’s high wassail. 

Before them lay the great hall with its low 
rafters upon which the arms of the palatinate 
were embossed in blue and red and gold, and its 
stone walls ornamented here and there with rude 
carvings of rose garlands and angels, and paint- 
ings of a later date than the hall itself, while 
medieval medallions portraying princes and pre- 
lates filled the window arches. This room was 
the background for a scene in which Emma found 
it difficult to place credence, for it was filled with 
a gay crowd of revellers of the olden time. Cru- 
saders with flowing plume, minstrels in velvet 
doublet, and retainers in jerkin and hose, were 
assembled there, illuminated by the smoky light 
of hundreds of torches flaring against the walls. 

The feast evidently had just been finished, for 
stools were pushed back from the long table that 
ran down the midst of the room upon which rem- 


238 


THe Great Plan. 


nants of it — wild boar roasted whole, great 
pastries and stews, and deep flagons of wine — 
still stood; some of the feasters were strolling 
about in laughter and talk, and others sat and 
drank, while now and then and here and there, 
snatches of song burst from them. 

The Countess Sigart, bending a little forward 
from one small window of their hiding place, gave 
one look down into that curious scene and, her 
eye lighting on a tall figure in the splendid attire 
of a Bavarian prince of the eleventh century, 
which had a royal mien in spite of the rather 
heavy red face, stifled a giggle and sank down 
upon a stool and hid her face with her hands. 
But the other two girls, who had not observed in 
their excitement that the grafin from the first had 
been indifferent to it, did not notice now her 
strange behavior, they were too interested in what 
they saw 

With pounding hearts and parted lips they 
gazed into the room below, their eyes lighting in 
amazement, now on the vision of a Carmelite friar 
in the dress of his order, now on some superb 
figure of a knight templar in dazzling steel, and 
again on the gay motley of a fool. 


The Great Plan 


239 


What under the sun could it all mean? Emma 
was at a loss to understand. Ghosts she knew they 
could not be, of that she was sure, but if they were 
masqueraders, what had brought a hundred or 
more young men for such a purpose to her par- 
ticular castle of Niedenfels? She almost felt 
that the ghost Idea was the more logical one. 

Juliet caught her suddenly by the sleeve and 
gave a suppressed cry. “ Emma I ” she whispered 
in terrible excitement, “ There he Is! The Count 
Palatine I He ’s come to join the ghosts of his 
ancestors In their revels! ” 

Emma looked first at her friend to make sure 
she had not really lost her mind, and then In the 
direction of her pointing finger. A slender young 
knight was standing just below them, wearing over 
his coat of linked mall and steel breast-plate 
the mantle of the cross, while a long red plume 
nodded in his helmet. His vizor was up and his 
gray eyes even at that distance seemed like two 
stars In his pale face, and when he moved she 
saw that one leg. In flexible mail with plated shoe, 
halted a little. All this she remarked at Juliet’s 
bidding, but she did not see why it was remark- 
able. 


240 


The Great Plan 


“ Don’t you seef*^ whispered Juliet in an awed 
voice, “ it ’s the descendant of Count Otho him- 
self I And he ’s walking around talking to all 
those ghosts.” 

Emma turned to the highly excited girl and 
spoke very firmly. “ Now, Julie! ” she said, “ I 
know you ’ve something you want to tell me, but 
do be calm and sensible about it. What Is this 
nonsense about the Count Palatine and descendants 
and ghosts ? ” 

Juliet, thus urged, made an effort for self-con- 
trol and told her friend briefly and rapidly, her 
eyes never leaving the majestic figure of the young 
knight, the history of her encounter In the tower 
with the Count Palatine and her subsequent knowl- 
edge of him. “ Is n’t It romantic? ” she went on. 
“ He Is the last descendant of his race, and he 
lives all by himself In this old ruined castle of his 
ancestors. And now he ’s come to help these poor 
old ghosts celebrate their return to earth 1 ” 

Emma dragged her drowning faculties out of 
the quagmire of confusion Into which the disclo- 
sure of this stranger’s long residence In her castle 
and Miss Simms’ intimate acquaintance with him 
had thrown them. 


The Great Plan 


241 


“ And you Ve been seeing him every day? ” she 
said. 

“ Yes,’’ the other admitted. And with the 
word the identity of the spy who had given the 
Mannheim police such accurate information in re- 
gard to the personnel and plans of the Castle Nie- 
denfels inhabitants which so long had puzzled 
her, became clear to the astute mind of the little 
southerner. 

She started to her feet in deep displeasure. 
But she was prevented from expressing her feel- 
ings at that moment by the sight of another figure 
in the strange crowd below them. This was a 
tall young man in the guise of a troubadour, with 
velvet doublet and hose and long chains of silver 
falling over his rich lace collar. He had his back 
against a table, and the knight who had caused 
Juliet such agitation and the red-faced young man 
in the garb of an eleventh century prince, were 
standing by him and laughing at him while he 
strummed an entirely modern looking guitar and 
sang in a sweet melodious tenor that was perfectly 
familiar to Emma, a silly little darkey love song, 
that the negroes on her father’s plantation had 
sung many times. And, let it be added, that his 


242 


The Great Plan 


wig of long dark brown curls had fallen to one 
side and showed his close-cropped, fair head. 

This spectacle clinched the matter for Emma, 
and banished the last doubt in her mind. The 
thing was then, a masquerade, and whoever the 
other ninety or so young men she was sure the 
room contained might be, and whatever the reason 
for their gathering, she felt certain of the identity 
of at least one of them, and that the troubadour 
was Graham Horde. 

She did not wait to explain these things to the 
others, but with a harsh command, “ Come with 
me,” fairly flew down the narrow stairs that led 
from the balcony and burst in through the great 
door of the banqueting-hall upon the profoundly 
astonished revellers. 

Now, there were several facts that Emma 
learned afterward, of which she was not aware 
then. Among other things she learned that the 
revel itself was not, indeed, an orgy of disembod- 
ied spirits, as Juliet would have had her think, but 
the orgy of a society of students at the University 
of Heidelberg, to whom the legend of the nun 
and the crusader was as familiar as Mother Goose 
is to the average American child. It was their 


The Great Plan 


243 


custom to repair yearly to this ruin of Niedenfels 
and there carouse in unrestrained freedom in the 
costume and after the fashion of those crusaders 
who were said to haunt its splendid banqueting- 
hall. 

Also she learned that it was upon the invitation 
of the Burgraf u Graf zu Dohna-Findenstein, 
Sigart’s fiance, who was a graduate of Heidelberg 
and a former member of the society, that Graham 
and the Count Palatine, were present at the mas- 
querade. The three young men, thrown together 
in the same neighborhood, and all victims of the 
Great Plan, had become acquainted, and feeling 
the need now and then of robuster diversion than 
the castle and its fair inhabitants offered, had been 
delighted to join these Heidelberg students in 
their annual carnival. 

The courtesy of the invitation Holyoke and 
Horde had returned in some slight degree by 
promising to keep the matter a secret from the 
American girls — Sigart, of course, had been told 
about it by Adalbert — who had, much to the con- 
sternation of the Germans, invaded the sacred 
precincts of their castle. 

The banqueting-hall, the two men told their 


244 


The Great Plan 


hosts, was across the courtyard from the part of 
the castle used by the invaders, and the walls were 
thick, they could carouse as they liked, no one 
would be the wiser. Secure then in their Amer- 
ican friends’ promise of freedom from interrup- 
tion, the revellers were all the more astonished to 
behold Emma’s sudden entrance. 

Her interest in the why and wherefore of the 
masquerade entirely swallowed up in her excite- 
ment over discovering the identity of the person 
who had revealed the Great Plan to the police, 
she rushed up to the young knight with the red 
plume in his helmet, her face aflame with indigna- 
tion. “ What do you mean,” she cried, ‘‘ by tell- 
ing the Mannheim police about the Great Plan? 
What do you mean, I say? ” 

The three young men at the table fell back 
amazed and not a little alarmed. What had they 
done to bring upon them this small fury with the 
flashing eyes? It was Graham who collected him- 
self first, and it was he who attempted to answer* 

“ Now look here, Emma,” he said, “ you 
mustn’t get excited about this thing, I advise 
you — ” 

She interrupted him sharply. “ And who asked 


The Great Plan 


MS 

you to advise me about anything? ” she said, and 
turned to Holyoke. “ Be good enough to explain 
yourself ! ” she commanded. He hastened to 
take advantage of the permission. 

“ I ’m awfully sorry,” he said. “ I had to earn 
some money some way, as quick as I could. I Ve 
been studying medicine at Leipsig for two years, 
and this last semester my funds ran low. I want 
to be a surgeon, you know, and — ” 

“And with the surgeons stand!” put in 
Graham facetiously, his good humor apparently 
undisturbed by Emma’s sharpness. 

Holyoke continued without noticing the inter- 
ruption. “ And I knew the police inspector in 
Berlin — In a perfectly respectable way,” he 
added, catching the smile in Graham’s eye — 
“ And he gave me this job to — to — ” he began 
to stammer a little as Emma’s expression of sever- 
ity Increased, “ to come here and keep track of 
what went on In the castle and report to Mann- 
heim,” he went on. “ You see he had to obey 
orders and send some one but he did n’t think It 
was Important enough to waste a good man on, so 
he gave it to me because he ’s a friend of mine. 
And I took it,” he ended simply, “ because it meant 


246 


The Great Plan 


enough money to put me through next term, and 
then, too, it gave me a chance to go on studying.” 
He stopped and looked deprecatingly at the justly 
enraged owner of Castle Niedenfels, who with 
difficulty curbed her wrath during this long ex- 
planation. 

She opened her mouth to speak but it was not 
she who answered him. The crowd of non-com- 
batant spectators, masquerading as monks and 
jesters and men-at-arms, which by this time had 
assembled about the principal actors in the scene, 
saw two girls step from the doorway where they 
had been lingering and hearing everything that 
had gone on. While one of them, a tall girl 
with black hair that came down on her forehead 
in a widow’s peak, sought the side of that mas- 
querader who was attired as an eleventh century 
Bavarian prince, the other stepped close up to the 
strange young American in the dress of the cru- 
sader, and looked him in his scared eyes, her own 
eyes big with the tragedy of shattered illusions 
and the hurt that follows the discovery that you 
are the victim of your own imagination. 

“ So you were n’t the Count Palatine at all,” 
she said in a low thrilling voice they felt was very 


The Great Plan 


247 


near to tears; “ so you were only a spy! A com- 
mon spy I ” 

At sight of her the young man looked aghast. 

“ I could n’t help it,” he stammered at last; it 
was the only way I could keep on studying and 
earn enough to go back to the university, I had 
to do it — you know I had to 1 ” 

She never changed her tense position. “ You 
pretended to be fond of me and let me tell you 
all my friend’s secrets and you were a police spy 
all the time I ” she said, still in that same wounded 
tone. “ I ’ll never believe in you — never trust 
you — again I ” She turned her back on him and 
put her arm across her eyes. 

“Juliet! ” He sprang to her, but she waved 
him back. “ I shall never trust you again,” she 
repeated with terrible finality. The situation was 
plain enough, they had cared and now it was at 
an end. Graham felt very sorry. 

“ Oh, come. Miss Simms,” he said impulsively, 
coming up to her. “ You must n’t feel that way 
about it; he did n’t mean to behave badly, I swear 
he did n’t ! ” 

“ What do you know about it? ” asked Emma 
surprised at his interference. 


248 


The Great Plan 


“ I know Holyoke,” Horde returned. 

“ You know Holyoke? ” repeated Emma in the 
most puzzled voice possible, and even Juliet for- 
got her grief and looked up in amazement. 

“ Yes,” admitted Graham with a cheerful smile, 
“that’s his name and what’s wrong about it? 
He and I were at Harvard together,” and then 
he added as if it were the happiest sort of inspira- 
tion, “ and you ought to know him too.” He 
turned to the disconsolate “ Count Palatine,” who 
stood gazing at the floor, and made the Introduc- 
tion quite as If they were at an afternoon tea. 
“ Miss Daingerfield, Mr. James Holyoke.” But 
both objects of this kindly courtesy were too pre- 
occupied with their own thoughts to pay attention 
to it. 

“ And you have known all the while,” Emma 
said to Graham, slowly and reflectively, “ that the 
Count — er Mr. — that he,” she pointed her fin- 
ger at Holyoke, “ was staying here at NIedenfels 
and how he was spending his time? ” 

“ Ever since I accidentally discovered him about 
a month ago.” Miss Daingerfield’s face hard- 
ened and her mouth set as forbiddingly as such a 
pretty mouth could set. 



She pointed her lino;er at Holyoke 













The Great Plan 


249 


“ And why did n’t you tell me? ” she said, “ that 
there was a police spy in my castle? ” 

He saw then what he was in for, how he had 
offended. “ Why, hang it,” he said, turning red, 
I could n’t give him away, could I ? It would 
have queered his job, and it was n’t my secret.” 

“ What about my job, my work I mean — the 
Great Plan?” He laughed uneasily. 

“ Why, Emma,” he said, “ you know I don’t 
take that seriously! ” He meant to excuse him- 
self, but he merely succeeded in crystallizing her 
wrath. That was just the thing that she held 
most against him, his inability to regard the Great 
Plan in anything but a humorous light. 

She took a great breath. “ I shall never, 
never forgive you as long as I live,” she told him, 
and she pulled off his signet ring that she always 
wore on the middle finger of her right hand, and 
held it out to him. 

But Graham did not take it. “ Emma ! ” he 
expostulated, “don’t! Surely, you’re not going 
to make such a fuss as that over nothing ! ” Poor 
fellow, he had only added insult to injury ! 

Nothing! ** she cried, forcing the ring into 
his hand. “ Nothing indeed ! I hope when your 


250 


The Great Plan 


best friend laughs at your pet ambitions some- 
body will tell you it’s nothing! ” But this out- 
burst did not have the desired effect for it seemed 
neither to crush Horde or reduce him to a proper 
sense of his base conduct. 

He stood looking at the ring a minute as It 
lay In his hand, then slipped it calmly into his 
pocket. “ Do you mean to say,” he said, coming 
up close and speaking quietly, and not at all In a 
humble tone, “ that you ’re really going to treat 
me like this after — after? — ” He stopped, 
for he could not go on and Emma knew he meant 
after the scene on the balcony when she had kissed 
him because she had been so glad he had come 
back to her from death. 

But her feelings were outraged, the thing was 
serious to her, and she was hurt that he had 
showed more loyalty to his friend Holyoke, than 
he had to her; so her anger, for that fatal mo- 
ment, swallowed up her love. “ I do mean to 
say It I ” she answered him defiantly. 

He turned around and picked up his silly velvet 
hat with the long troubadour’s feather and ad- 
dressed the erstwhile Count Palatine Otho, de- 
scendant of all the WIttelsbachs, who still stood 


The Great Plan 


2S1 


silently staring at the floor, “ Come on, Jim,” he 
said; “let’s go.” And with his arm in his 
friend’s and never a backward look he left the 
room. 

Perhaps if at this moment Emma had not caught 
sight of her friend Sigart engaged in intimate con- 
versation with a young man in the dress of a prince 
of the plden time who wore a fair mustache and 
greatly resembled the young officer she and the 
grafin had encountered on their ride in the Thier- 
garten that day in Berlin, she might have given 
more signs of the shock which Graham’s prompt 
departure occasioned her. As it was her atten- 
tion was distracted, and with a feeling that she 
was about to discover some other mystery that she 
had not suspected, and that it did not matter, be- 
cause so much had happened already, she ap- 
proached the careless pair of lovers who started 
back guiltily when they saw that the sentimental 
character of their interest in each other had been 
observed by the person from whom they most 
wished to conceal it. 

“ This is a relative of my family,” stammered 
the stupid grafin, “ a sort of cousin.” But Emma 
was not stupid and she saw in a moment with no 


252 


The Great Plan 


feeling of astonishment — the revelations of the 
past few minutes seemed to have exhausted her 
ability to feel surprised — that the young man 
before her and the officer of the Thiergarten epi- 
sode, and the German nobleman who had been 
motoring down the Rhine, and had stayed at 
Adrian Kimberley’s the night of his dinner, were 
one and the same person, and that person the 
much-talked-of “ Adalbert.” She smiled a little 
ghost-like smile at Sigart. “ Don’t be frightened, 
dear,” she said, “ I know you could n’t help his 
coming here.” 

The relieved grafin saw that although Emma 
had guessed the identity of the young man at her 
side, she had not realized that he was there with 
the permission and knowledge of his fiancee. 

“ Dear one,” she said, hysterically throwing 
herself in Emma’s arms, “ you are so clever I ” 

Emma patted her shoulder soothingly. “ It 
didn’t take much cleverness to see you didn’t 
know he was coming to the masquerade,” she 
said. “ Of course, I knew you would n’t break 
your promise to me and meet him on the sly.” A 
moan was the only answer that escaped the per- 
fidious little countess as she burrowed deeper into 


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253 


Emma’s embrace. But she was not punished 
enough It appeared, for Emma, almost restored 
to cheerfulness by the necessity of exercising her 
authority, gently extricated herself from the de- 
taining arms of her friend and In a perfectly mat- 
ter-of-fact voice, told her that she must send the 
devoted Adalbert away at once. 

“You must make him promise to return im- 
mediately to Berlin,” she said. SIgart started. 
“What?” she cried. “Oh, no, Emma, I 
could n’t, he will be so angry I ” 

“Couldn’t, SIgart?” repeated Emma, “why 
not? You don’t mean to say you approve of his 
coming here against your orders? ” 

The unhappy countess hung her head. If she 
said she did approve she more than feared that 
the whole truth would come out, and her double- 
dealing In regard to her promise to forbid iVdal- 
bert the light of her countenance, would be dis- 
covered. What would Emma say If she could 
know that Adalbert had been dwelling not a quar- 
ter of a mile from the castle the whole summer, 
and that It was he who had been Tilly’s burglar, 
and about their hiding, the four of them. In the 
chimney? She shuddered to think of Emma’s dis- 


254 


The Great Plan 


pleasure, and so great was her fondness for her 
friend not to say her awe of her, that she did not 
try to find out; she preferred continued deception. 

“ No,” she said in a low voice, “ I don’t ap- 
prove.” 

“ Then tell him to go, for mercy’s sake, and 
be done with it,” Emma commanded, while the 
Herr Graf Adalbert, who spoke English perfectly 
and had been listening to this conversation with 
ever deepening surprise, grew crimson. 

Go, Adalbert,” repeated the countess obedi- 
ently, but without raising her eyes to her lover’s 
face. 

“Go?” echoed the young man, with an angry 
frown, “ and why go? ” 

“He doesn’t understand,” said Emma; “tell 
him the truth, dear, that you promised me not to 
see anything more of him until he becomes a 
suffragist, and that he mustn’t stay here any 
longer.” 

Sigart threw her lover a beseeching glance 
which she hoped would make him see that what 
she said was not of her own volition. “ You 
hear ? ” she said. “ Ah, Adalbert, it makes me 
very sad, but you must do what my dear friend 


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255 


has said, you must go away and not see me again.” 

That apparently ended all reasonable discussion 
of the affair as far as Adalbert was concerned for 
he suddenly began pointing first at Emma, then 
at Sigart and then at himself, stuttering terribly 
the while, and when the poor countess who 
seemed to understand well enough what he meant, 
responded by bursting into tears, he threw his 
arms in the air and turning, stamped out of 
the room like a little boy in a temper. It 
was not so dignified an exit as that of the other 
two young men, but it was very like it in character. 

This seemed to be the signal for the general 
departure of the masqueraders who had finished 
their feasting some time before, and one and all 
they began to hurry after the burgraf, and soon 
there was no one left in the hall except the three 
girls. They waited in awed silence until the last 
plume, the last cowl had vanished when the three 
crept close together with their arms around each 
other’s necks. 

“ Adalbert I ” moaned the countess, and “ Otho I 
Otho I ” wailed Juliet, unable yet to grasp the 
meaning of Graham’s revelations in regard to the 
supposed German count’s identity. But Emma 


256 


The Great Plan 


said never a word. The cry “Graham!” was 
too fiercely and deeply bedded in her heart to 
pass her lips. 


CHAPTER XVI 


morning following that In- 
lible scene in the banqueting- 
Emma slept late, and when 
woke she thought it all had 
1 a dream, but Juliet and 
Sigart, coming in fully dressed, assured her mourn- 
fully that it was only too real, and for proof told 
her that both Graham and Jim Holyoke had 
packed their grips and left the castle. Emma said 
she did n’t want any breakfast and turned her face 
to the wall and they left her. 

So Niedenfels was empty of Graham, empty of 
love I She felt suddenly sick of everything, of 
the Rhine and the Great Plan and the Berlin Boy- 
cott League I If only she could go home how 
happy she would be I That was all that was 
wanted, she felt sure, to make her heart light 
again. She closed her eyes and with all the energy 
of longing projected her mind back into the great 
white house with its wide galleries and green blinds 



257 



258 


The Great Plan 


and long windows which seven generations of Ken- 
tucky Daingerfields had owned. She saw the 
chintz-covered mahogany in the living-room, and 
the portraits of her ancestors on the wall, and the 
half dozen dogs that always lay by her father’s big 
chair, and she saw her mother, stately and serene, 
giving orders to Cicely, the old negress, who was 
at one and the same time, supreme dictator to a 
dozen or more house servants and “ Mis’ Mary’s ” 
humble slave. And a vision of the high-ceilinged 
dining-room wainscoted in walnut, came poig- 
nantly back to her. She saw the shining lace- 
covered table, piled with good things of old 
Mammy Jerusha’s cooking, hot breads and two or 
three kinds of vegetables and preserves. Sitting 
at the head of it, was her tall father with his silver 
gray hair and pointed black beard. As plainly 
almost as if the scene were actually going on be- 
fore her eyes she saw him peer at the roast as if 
he had never seen such a thing before, his never 
failing custom before carving, and heard him in- 
quire of his wife, “ What is this, Mary? ” 

And Emma forgot her trouble and smiled a 
little as she remembered how at that point she and 
her mother always exchanged glances, and with 


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259 


what patience Mrs. Daingerfield always turned 
to whatever darkey was waiting on them, and in- 
structed him to tell Mr. Daingerfield that it was 
“ beef,’’ or “ lamb,” or “ pork,” whichever it 
happened to be. 

But happy reminiscences gave place soon enough 
to the dreary realization that in spite of her loss 
of interest and her desire to give it all up she 
would have to continue with her work as she had 
planned it. She had told her father that come 
what might she would stick to her undertaking 
until she finished it, and her pride compelled her 
to keep her word. She knew he did not like “ quit- 
ters.” However, if she could not go home right 
away, as she would have preferred to do, at least 
she did not have to remain in the castle where 
Graham was not. No, that she wouldn’t do. 
Instead she would start for Berlin that very after- 
noon ; and she rose at once with that determination. 

If the events of the preceding evening seemed 
unfortunate to some of the residents of Castle 
Niedenfels, there was one person to whom they 
seemed entirely satisfactory, and that was Adrian 
Kimberley. It is an ill wind that blows nobody 
good, and the news of Emma’s quarrel with Gra- 


26 o 


The Great Plan 


ham, filled him with joy. With his rival thus 
providentially and unexpectedly cleared from the 
road, perhaps he would have a chance himself. 

Filled with this hope, he made himself indis- 
pensable to Sigart and Emma on their journey to 
Berlin, securing the pleasantest compartments, ar- 
ranging their luggage, walking with them on the 
platform at the different stops and providing them 
at their pleasure with crisp rolls and fresh ham 
from the station wirtschaft. And Emma thought 
he had never been so agreeable. He came out 
of himself to a degree that surprised her and 
talked so charmingly and gayly about the people 
around them, and the news from home, and the 
chances of success which the boycott had that she 
found herself promising, almost before she knew 
it, that, in spite of that persistent feeling of loss 
which stood for her thought of Graham, she 
would see a lot of him in Berlin. Yes, she told 
him in reply to his eager questions, she knew he 
was an American, and that the boycott was not 
directed against him; yes, if he liked he could call 
for her if she had to go out in the evening; yes, 
she would be very glad to meet Freifrau von 
Uhling, who had just come to town, If he thought 


The Great Plan 


261 


she would be interested in the boycott; yes, she 
would be glad to go to the theater or a concert 
with him now and then when work became too 
arduous. Having gained so much, astute and 
tactful “ Cousin Adrian ” let the matter drop and 
suggested that she try to sleep as Sigart had been 
doing for the past half hour, and fixing a rug over 
her feet, left the compartment for the smoking 
car. 

When the Kaiser first heard of the Berlin Boy- 
cott League and its manifestations in Berlin, he 
had decided to let the matter rest until his return 
from Corfu, but upon receiving news of the Prin- 
cess Ruhlenburg’s dinner-dance and of the siege 
which the husbands and fathers of the boycotters 
had laid to her palace, and of the denouement of 
the affair, he was thrown into a great state of 
excitement. 

What I Mobs in the streets of his capital city, 
dynamite employed to open palace doors, women 
defying men and men threatening women, and all 
this happening among people who formed his 
court circle and were most prominent in his king- 
dom, why it was anarchy. Use majeste! It re- 
flected upon the good name of the empire — was 


262 


The Great Plan 


outrageous, and not to be borne. The thing must 
be put a stop to, this boycott business, or it would 
get in the papers in Europe and in America, as 
well as at home, and he would be made ridiculous 
from one end of the globe to the other. 

What should be done? He could promise to 
become an advocate of their cause, that would im- 
mediately terminate these unseemly proceedings, 
but equally of course he would do no such thing. 
He could not. Man was woman’s superior and 
must never lose his rightful place. The patriar- 
chal basis of family life, where the man rules su- 
preme and the woman bends her head thankfully 
to the marital yoke, was the only true one and 
must not be surrendered. And besides, if it were 
ridicule he was seeking to avoid, if it were shame 
that he wanted to save Germany from, the Kaiser 
shuddered to think how Europe would laugh if it 
heard that the “ Kaiser,” Emperor of Germany, 
and supreme “ War Lord,” had been boycotted in- 
to favoring equal suffrage by three hundred of the 
ladies of his court circle 1 No, some other method 
of restoring order must be discovered and he 
meant to find it and that before long. 

As a preliminary his Majesty sent word at once 


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263 


to his prime minister in Berlin to keep all notice 
of this unfortunate state of affairs out of the 
papers until his return from Corfu. 

A week later found him at Potsdam, and as a 
direct result, Emma heard, on the afternoon of the 
day following her advent in the capital, that the 
Kaiser was going to give a ball, and that all the 
ladies constituting the court circle, and incidentally 
the league of the fair boycotters, was commanded 
to attend. 

What was more, according to the Tagehlatt 
which made the announcement, the ball was to be 
the greatest of its kind ever before given by the 
emperor, and was to be at Potsdam, the imperial 
summer residence, the second week in May. No 
expense was to be spared to make the affair as 
magnificent as possible, and there was to be enter- 
tainment by the world’s most famous artists, sing- 
ers, dancers, and actors. Rumor had it also that 
the royalty of Europe had received invitations. 
But the features that made it of special importance 
and caused a flutter in every one of the hearts of 
the feminine guests, was Wilhelm the II.’s offer 
of a golden cup, such as he presented yearly to the 
winner of the regatta at Grunau on the Spree, 


264 


The Great Plan 


to the woman who, by vote of the masculine guests 
present, should wear the handsomest gown. 

The point of all this instantly was apparent to 
Emma, especially when she read about that crafty 
offer of the prize cup for the best dressed woman. 
The Kaiser was a true diplomatist, and he was 
giving the ball with the sole intention of breaking 
the boycott. Feminine love of frivolity he hoped 
would Induce the women to attend the function 
to which the men were also Invited, and thus would 
end the revolt without necessitating the humili- 
ation of employing force. 

Emma was talking It all over with the Princess 
Ruhlenburg. To the founder of the League the 
news about the ball had been like a challenge to 
battle, a call to arms. “No, no I we’ll never 
go I ” she protested agitatedly, “ we ’ll die first! ” 

The princess shrugged her shoulders. “ I don’t 
know about that, my dear Miss Daingerfield,” 
she said. “ We should n*t go of course, and they 
say they won’t go, the ones I talked to about It, 
Helga, and Lena Eckhorn and the rest, but I tell 
you frankly. It ’s going to be a struggle to make 
them stick to It. That golden cup for the hand- 
somest gown you know is almost more than mere 


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265 


woman can withstand I ” She laughed. Already 
the novelty of the B. B. L. had begun to pall upon 
her. 

Emma looked at her in astonishment. How 
could she speak so lightly of so serious a crisis. 

“ Good Heavens I ” she said, “ they surely won’t 
make such fools of themselves, of us all, as that? 
They won’t give up now, for such a paltry bait? 
Why, think what it would mean if they held out 
against It? The Kaiser for very shame’s sake 
would have to capitulate, give us his support in 
the Reichstag.” All her old enthusiasm for the 
cause came back with a rush In the shock of hear- 
ing of this threatened defection of Its champions. 

The princess looked serious again. “ Well,” 
she said, “ I really don’t know, I sincerely hope 
not. Of course I should die of the disgrace of It, 
If Max” — that was her husband — “ came back 
home again without our having won the ballot, but 
my dear friend, you and I will have to do some 
pretty strong bolstering I can tell you If we mean 
to keep the silly creatures from jumping the 
track I ” And Emma, who Immediately set about 
this task, found that the princess’ words were true. 
She and SIgart worked like slaves, giving luncheons 


266 


The Great Plan 


and dinners at which they urged and exhorted the 
guests to stand firm in their decision not to go to 
Potsdam, and making house to house visitations of 
the three hundred members of the League, for the 
purpose of rousing them to withstand the insidi- 
ous temptation to surrender, which the ball af- 
forded. 

In the meantime, while Emma, in Berlin, was 
trying to forget her break with Graham in the 
whirl of business affairs, Juliet, in Castle Nieden- 
fels, was trying to forget, while she busied herself 
accomplishing those things which Emma had left 
her to do, that she ever had a friend whom she 
cared as much about as she did for the so-called 
“ Count Palatine,” whose identity as James Holy- 
oke, Harvard graduate and friend of Graham 
Horde’s, she found so much difficulty in remem- 
bering. 

In gentle melancholy she went about her task 
of winding up the affairs of the Niedenfels Suf- 
frage Emigration Society, promising herself that 
she would never think about “ him ” again, and 
thinking about him all the time. What a pity that 
her mysterious adventure with the young knight 
of the tower had turned out so badly I Her faith 


The Great Plan 


267 


that romance was not yet dead had received a 
rude blow. How could he have deceived her so; 
played upon her credulity? It was cruel, and she 
was well rid of him. But ahl if she could only 
have him back I 

There really was not a great deal of work to be 
done, she had done so much while Emma had been 
In Berlin the first time. All the lieutenants of the 
various stations of the society had been notified 
of its termination, and she had advised with them 
what disposition to make of office furnishings and 
other property of the society, and had arranged, 
as Emma had empowered her to do, for their re- 
turn to their various homes. But Lieutenants 
Dolly Price and Hester Williams wanted to know 
if she and Emma would n’t join them in a tour 
of England. Mary KIttel wanted to know If she 
would n’t sail for home on the same boat with her, 
and Amy Pritchard was urgent In her desire that 
her two friends, and erstwhile superior officers, 
should meet her In a week or two In London, 
where she Intended to be married, so there was a 
little correspondence to attend to. 

It was toward the end of the week when Emma 
had been gone about three days that Juliet received 


268 


The Great Plan 


one morning a letter that surprised her very much. 
It was signed “ James Holyoke,” and contained 
the news that the young man had returned from 
Leipsig, where he had gone on his departure from 
the castle, and was going to be at Reichenstein that 
night through courtesy of Mr. Kimberley, and was 
going over at eight o’clock to Niedenfels, and 
ended with a passionate plea that she would see 
him. He need not have been in doubt about that; 
Juliet was more than willing to see him; she was 
overjoyed, and at once went to ask Tilly to press 
out her prettiest dress. 

It had been a still day with hardly a breeze to 
rustle the tree tops but by sundown a wind had 
sprung up and was whipping the Rhine to foam, 
and dull and heavy clouds blotted out the color 
in the sky. Juliet was dismayed. What if it 
should get too rough for the “ Count Palatine ” — 
even now she found difficulty in thinking of him as 
“Jim Holyoke” — to cross? But the good 
Frau Bloem to whom she confided this fear 
laughed at it. A launch could weather any storm, 
she said. Nevertheless by seven o’clock the gale 
was tearing its way over the surface of the broad 
and rapid stream in a far from reassuring manner. 


The Great Plan 


269 


and the Rhine leaped to meet it in boiling eddies 
and sharp curled waves. Rain fell and the thun- 
der sounded almost continuously. 

Juliet had eaten her dinner, and had dressed 
for the evening, and was sitting in the Alte Bau, 
in readiness for Holyoke’s coming, reading a fas- 
cinating book about the baronial wars and the 
first confederation of the Rhine, but at the sound 
of thunder she laid it aside and full of uneasiness 
went to the window. The sight of the angry 
river did not allay this feeling and she enveloped 
herself in a mackintosh and with an old hat 
on her head went out and stood on the cliff and 
looked anxiously over in the direction of I^eichen- 
stein. 

She thought Holyoke might be starting early to 
avoid the height of the storm, which was increas- 
ing momentarily, and this surmise proved correct. 
In spite of the rain and the fading light she could 
see the launch putting out from the other side of 
the river. Slowly it beat up-stream against the 
current and from its frantic bobbing up and down 
Juliet guessed that it had but one occupant. 

“ Oh, why did n’t he take someone with him 1 ” 
she thought, anxiously. But she had not yet real 


270 


The Great Plan 


reason to fear, for the little boat was keeping to its 
course and making a very good diagonal across, 
and presently she relaxed her tension of thought 
and found herself watching its progress with some 
degree of confidence. Then all in a minute, just 
as it had made a little more than half the distance, 
and she could distinguish quite clearly the solitary 
figure on board, something seemed to happen, for 
most unexpectedly the launch lost headway and 
whirling around with its side to the raging current, 
began to drift helplessly down-stream. 

The light had almost gone except for a streak 
of yellow along the edge of the opposite shore, 
so that it was difficult to tell just what had hap- 
pened, but Juliet had time to see how fearfully 
the boat rocked and to observe how closely the 
figure in the bow bent over the engine before 
wind and wave and rain swallowed up the picture. 

Aghast for a moment the girl stood looking out 
toward the river while the lightning played hide 
and seek around the distant towers of Reichen- 
stein, and the thunder bellowed; then she turned 
and ran along the edge of the cliff till she came 
to the little chapel that was perched on the highest 
point of the rocks which, while it connected with 


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271 


the castle from the inside, also opened outward. 
She felt that, as there was nothing left for her to 
do but to pray, the chapel was the best place to 
pray in. 

It was a small building in simple gothic style 
with the half open pair of compasses carved in 
stone above the door, which in early times showed 
that it was commended to the care of the Holy 
Virgin. She threw open the door and rushed in. 
The chapel was dimly lit by two candles burning 
on the altar before a small wooden cross, placed 
there no doubt by Tilly and Meta who were de- 
voted worshipers. The shape was octagonal, 
with eight narrow windows filled with thirteenth 
century stained glass. In the niches between them 
were statuettes of saints. The candelabrum was 
also thirteenth century and very elaborate but the 
object in the chapel which always interested 
Juliet the most was the great marble tomb in its 
center which contained the centuries-old dust of 
one of the former owners of Niedenfels, Duke 
Wolfgang the First. A statue on its top repre- 
sented the good knight clad in full armor lying 
with his sword by his side and his mailed hands 
crossed on his quiet breast. 


272 


The Great Plan 


Half to divert her mind and keep off the de- 
spair which threatened to overwhelm her when she 
thought of the peril the launch and its occupant 
were in, and half because she did not much care 
what she did, she went now to the tomb and looked 
down into the noble face of the recumbent figure 
there, fumbling absently the carved breast-pin at 
the statue’s throat which joined the surcoat above 
the cuirass, while she wondered what those stone 
lips could tell of death if they could speak. As 
if precipitated by such speculation, all at once 
her fear for the safety of the young man fighting 
for his life out there on the dark river mastered 
her, and weak with the thought which oppressed 
her she sank down on the step below. 

Oh, if she should never see him again, oh, if 
those starlike eyes, that hesitating smile, that ap- 
pealing limp were gone forever from the world! 
She wrung her hands and told herself that if he 
were drowned it was her fault, for if she had 
never sent him away from her he would never 
have attempted the crossing. 

For some time she sat agonizing in much this 
same way while the thunder pealed and the rain 
rattled, and then above all that horrid confusion 


The Great Plan 


273 


of noise, she heard another sound, a man’s clear 
tenor. She caught the last verse of the song. 

Singing from Palestine 
Hither I come! 

Lady-love, lady-love, 

Welcome me home! 

The next instant the young man whose fate 
she had been bewailing so bitterly was standing in 
the doorway. Yes, there he stood, drenched but 
unharmed, — starry eyes, hesitating smile, appeal- 
ing limp and all ! She sprang to him. 

“ Oh,” she cried, “ you ’re safe I ” Her tone 
was enough. That and her attitude crouching on 
the step of the tomb, were unmistakable. 

“Juliet I ” he cried, “you care! Oh, darling I 
Darling I” 

After a long, rapturous interval during which 
they were seated on the steps of the tomb, they 
became more sane, and he told her how it all had 
happened ; how he had known she was in the chapel 
because the path up the cliff led right by it and she 
had left the door ajar, and how something had 
gone wrong with the launch’s engine in mid-stream, 
and that he had been in great peril during the 
operation of fixing it as it was impossible to do 


274 


The Great Plan 


that and keep the boat’s head to the current too. 
Still he had managed to repair the damage at last 
and had beaten back up-stream until, wet through 
and almost exhausted with the struggle, he had 
reached the Niedenfels landing. 

At this point in the tale Juliet kissed him, and 
although he did not understand that a special 
reason prompted the caress, it was because she 
remembered his slight build and his limp. The 
bravery of those not physically fit had always 
seemed to her much greater than that of those who 
were. 

But, as he went on to explain again how it was 
he had come to play the part of police spy in the 
castle, and her memory of the blow she had had 
when the scene in the banqueting-hall had first 
made his identity clear came back to her, for the 
life of her Juliet could n’t help growing colder. 
She edged away from him and turned her face 
so that he could not see it. 

“I — I don’t believe,” she began, while he 
peered at her anxiously through the gloom, “ that 
you really care after all.” 

He fell back against the tomb. “ Juliet,” he 
expostulated, “ don’t say that, you can’t mean it! ” 


The Great Plan 


275 


“ But I do,” she said. He struggled for a view 
of her face. 

“ In Heaven’s name, why? ” 

She turned quickly to him. “ I don’t mind 
your doing what you did, if you had to — ac- 
cepting that sort of position — but I do mind 
your pretending to be fond of me, so you could 
get information out of me and tell the police! ” 
He stared at her more puzzled than hurt. 

“ But I was n*t pretending,” he exclaimed. “ I 
was fond of you. What else do you think kept 
me here after they broke up the Great Plan ? Ah, 
Juliet, I do care, don’t you see I do?” 

But she shook her head. “ In the light of 
what ’s happened in the past,” she said, didactic- 
ally, “ I ’m bound not to believe you! ” 

He leaned forward and in the winking light 
from the candle, his eyes were brighter than any 
stars that ever shone. “ Can’t you believe me 
then, in the light of what’s happened now?** he 
said thrillingly. But some latent stubbornness, or 
perhaps it was the feminine desire to prolong a 
dramatic moment, prevented her from acknowl- 
edging that she could. 

“ No,” she said. He got to his feet. Then 


276 


The Great Plan 


I might as well have drowned,’* he said, and took 
one step to the door. 

Probably he had not the faintest notion of 
throwing himself back into the river from which 
he had just escaped, but the action had that effect 
on Juliet. She saw then how dreadfully in earnest 
he was and knew that he must indeed have been 
speaking the truth. All his talks with her in their 
meetings in the tower were indeed sincere and had 
been inspired by love, and not the desire to find 
out her secrets. She sprang and caught him by the 
arm. “ Don’t leave me, I love you,” she whis- 
pered, and burst into tears. 

So it was all right, and he forgave her for 
doubting and calmed her, and presently they were 
talking happily about their prospects for being 
married. He told her that he had quarreled 
with his father and that he had his own way to 
make in the world, and wondered if she minded. 
But she squeezed his hand, and he went on encour- 
aged. He had always wanted to be a surgeon, he 
said; his grandfather had been a very great one. 

“ I want to be like him,” he said earnestly; “ he 
was so wonderful, his patients used to say of him 
that when they went to him in his office, and 


The Great Plan 


277 


trembling tried to tell him their troubles he would 
stop them and talk about other things and then 
when he had made them feel calm and happy 
again, he would take their hands and lower his 
voice, so that it was as gentle as a woman’s, and 
say * Now tell me.’ And they found they could.” 
The young man paused a moment, then finished 
hurriedly: “ They all loved him,” he said, “ you 
don’t know ! ” 

Juliet smiled tenderly at him. “ You ’ll be like 
that,” she said. He kissed her. “ I don’t 
know,” he said, “ but here a piece of news. 
You know I went back to Leipsig that night when 
Horde and I left the castle. Well, I went to 
finish my last term at the university, and while I 
was there I had the good fortune to fall in with 
Herr Dr. Zimmer, the most famous surgeon in 
the city, who took a fancy to me and offered me 
the position of assistant in his office when I have 
completed the course.” 

Juliet gave a little “ Ah-h ” of pleasure, and 
young Holyoke went on to explain that this was 
the best possible thing that could happen to him, 
for though it meant that he would be poor for 
many years, it meant too, that if there was any- 


278 


The Great Plan 


thing at all in him he eventually would succeed be- 
yond the hopes of the average medical student, 
because of the opportunity to learn from so great 
a master. 

And this was the same Juliet who always had 
told Emma that the prince who was to come riding 
for her on his great white horse was to be very 
rich and give her everything heart could desire, 
who listened now to her lover’s picture of happi- 
ness under difficulties with little cries of delight 
and squeezings of the arm. She loved “ to be 
poor,” she said, it was “so romantic!” The 
candles burned almost down to their sockets before 
the two could bring themselves to return to the 
other part of the castle where Tilly had been 
wondering for the last hour or so what had be- 
come of Fraulein Simms. 


CHAPTER XVII 


ND now what had become of Em- 
ma? She was still at her post in 
Berlin working to the full extent 
of her energetic powers upon the 
problem of forcing three hundred 
pleasure-loving, pampered, and capricious women 
to remain firm in their intention not to go to the 
Kaiser’s ball. The invitations had of course been 
formally accepted, that was in accordance with 
court etiquette which held that an invitation from 
the Emperor was the same as a command, but 
Emma did not intend, nevertheless, to have the 
B. B. L. appear. She thought that the revolt 
would be even more effective if it followed appar- 
ent acquiescence and that to defy the Kaiser in fact 
rather than by letter was better policy. But the 
task of making her followers obey her was not 
an easy one, for coupled with their reluctance to 
give up the dazzling function at Potsdam was their 
lack of the courage required to take such a mo^ 



279 



28 o 


The Great Plan 


mcntous step. It was uphill work, but at last 
Emma found that to all appearances she was suc- 
ceeding. Her example and personal magnetism, 
her unceasing exhortations and exertions supple- 
mented by those of the Grafin von Hesse-Schwerin 
and the Princess Ruhlenburg were having their 
effect. As the time set for the ball drew near she 
had the satisfaction of pledging to remain at their 
homes on the great night the last recalcitrants who 
had balked at the idea. 

“ I think we ’ve succeeded,” Emma told Adrian 
Kimberley, who had been her constant adviser 
and attendant during those trying days, as they 
motored down the Unter den Linden one after- 
noon. “ They won’t go, not one of them I Oh, 
what a victory it will be ! ” 

He looked admiringly at her high color and 
sparkling eyes which so perfectly disguised her 
great fatigue. “I’m sure I hope so,” he said; 
“ you deserve success, you ’ve worked so hard.” 

She sighed and leaned back in her seat. “ I 
just have,” she said, “ but, Adrian ” — she had 
been calling him that without the “ Cousin ” all 
that week — “ I must see the end of it, and I want 
you to help me.” 


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281 

“ Of course, but how? I don’t exactly under- 
stand — ” he began. 

“ I mean I want to be at Potsdam the night of 
the ball to behold the result of my labors. When 
I see that none of the ladies of the court circle, 
arrive at the palace door, it will repay me for my 
exertions.” 

He looked at her in astonishment. “ You 
wouldn’t go in yourself, would you?” he asked. 

“ No, I intend to wear some heavy dark cloak 
that will disguise me and stand with the crowd 
that always gathers to watch such things, and in- 
spect the guests. I ’ll warrant you they ’ll be 
mostly of the masculine persuasion 1 ” She 
laughed. 

Kimberley, as he always did, concealed an im- 
pulse to argue Emma out of her scheme. To 
agree with her instantly he thought was the quick- 
est way to her regard. 

“ All right,” he said smiling, “ I ’ll take you out 
in my car and see that you don’t get mobbed or 
anything.” She smiled too, and put her hand on 
his, where it lay as it always did in such circum- 
stances, close beside hers. 

“ You ’re very good to me,” said she. 


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The Great Plan 


“ Oh, well,” he replied, trying to keep the joy 
out of his voice, “ we have to look after the little 
girl, you know,” and gave her a really won- 
derful look out of his dark eyes. What a pity 
the right woman was not there to receive and 
respond to it ! 

But Emma, her thoughts only on one thing, dis- 
missed him casually at the Grafin Sigart’s door 
with the words, “ In three days, then.” 

The night of the Kaiser’s ball arrived at last, 
and shortly after eight o’clock Emma in a long, 
dark coat and close-fitting hat, seated herself in 
the tonneau of Kimberley’s big limousine that he 
had ordered sent down from Paris for the pur- 
pose, and its owner, enveloped in a long duster, 
gave the direction to the chauffeur and stepped in 
beside her, and they started on their seventeen- 
mile drive to Potsdam. 

As the big machine swung away down the Doro- 
theenstrasse Emma leaned out and waved to 
Sigart who, after seeing them off had stood for a 
minute in the light of the street lamp on the wide 
stone steps of her home. 

There was no real necessity for the grafin to 
go, Emma thought, and she was glad she had 


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283 


allowed Sigart’s dislike of the long and dusty drive 
to prove sufficient excuse for remaining behind. 

They left the city by the Brandenburg gate and 
ran out through the fashionable suburb known as 
the Bavarian quarter, through the Griinewald, 
past Charlottenburg, and so to Potsdam. They 
were earlier than they had expected to be, and 
found upon arriving at the entrance to the palace 
grounds, that it was only half-past nine. 

They had stopped the motor in a side street near 
at hand and Adrian rummaged in the pockets of 
the automobile and presently produced a small sil- 
ver flask of wine and some sandwiches in a case. 
“ Here,” he said to Emma, “ eat a little something, 
it will make the waiting easier.” 

She thanked him but only tasted the wine, for 
she found she was too excited to eat. A porten- 
tous feeling that the most important thing in her 
life was about to be decided, came creeping over 
her. 

“ Now, we must go,” said Kimberley, when they 
had been there some little time ; “ you know there ’s 
not a nation in the world like the Germans for 
arriving early and staying late. Come on, we ’ll 
leave the car here.” He helped her out and 


284 


The Great Plan 


Emma almost ran in her eagerness as they made 
their way toward the palace grounds. 

The two soldiers of the Potsdam foot guards 
who stood at each side of the awning, drew back 
as Emma and her escort passed between them and 
went down the canvas-roofed approach, which hid 
from their view the long building with its rows 
of columns in front, terraced roof, and carved 
dome which was the palace. They reached the 
flight of stairs at the other end that led to the 
door. Above it, between two columns they saw 
the imperial eagle carved in gold and heard from 
within the strains of music from the Potsdam foot- 
guards’ band. There they stopped in one of the 
openings on each side of the awning, where a 
number of what seemed to be gardeners and stable- 
men had stationed themselves in order to obtain a 
glimpse of the arrival of the guests. 

Emma and Kimberley had hardly found a place 
among them when a stream of people began to 
arrive. These, a man near him told Adrian in 
German, were the men and women who were to 
take part in the pageant which was going to be 
held at midnight and were followed by the mem- 
bers of the Assyrian ballet, another part of the 


The Great Plan 


28 j: 


evening’s entertainment, which had been rehearsed 
and produced under the Emperor’s personal super- 
vision, and had cost seventy-five thousand thalers. 

An Interval elapsed during which no one came 
and then the guests began to arrive. These 
seemed to Emma, anxiously peering out from her 
hiding place, to be chiefly soldiers In uniform, and 
although now and then a woman appeared It was 
always someone Emma did not recognize as be- 
longing to the Interdicted three hundred. 

For twenty minutes or so a stream of men, 
members of the Reichstag and princes and barons 
of the royal household, dribbled by, and Emma 
laughed because It seemed to her excited fancy 
that she noticed a certain unkempt look and dismal 
air among these gentlemen, as If they had for a 
long time been wifeless and without the tender 
ministrations of loving spouses. She laughed to 
herself at this thought and pinched the apprecia- 
tive Adrian’s arm. 

“ Not a B. B. L. among them,” she said, ‘‘ what 
did I tell you? ” 

But alas I that confident prophecy had passed 
her lips too soon. A bluster of motor horns at 
the far end of the awning announced more arrivals 


286 


The Great Plan 


which materialized presently into a flutter of skirts 
and feminine laughter. 

More performers? No, Emma. Not these, 
for the myriad electric lights that lit the covered 
way twinkled down on coronets and diamond- 
studded coiffures, and long bare necks thrusting 
swan-like from gorgeous evening wraps. The 
gay cluster swept nearer and nearer the spot where 
Emma was standing and soon was level with it, 
and it was then and not until then that she saw by 
whom it was headed. It was no other than the 
Princess Ruhlenburg ! 

Emma started back as if she had been struck, 
and Adrian heard the snap of her teeth as she 
ground them together in that way she had, and 
a savage little hand reached back and seized his 
ready one. 

“The traitor!” he heard her say. But alas 
for Emma! There were more traitors than the 
princess, for following close behind her came 
member after member of the B. B. L., in one long 
continuous procession of twos and threes. With 
despair she recognized this familiar face and that, 
the joyous Helga von Carlepp, the boyish Hilda 
Hempfelt, the pasty-faced Countess Eckhorn, the 


The Great Plan 


287 


beauteous markgrafin, who had made such frantic 
love to Adrian. All, all were there ! The cause 
of femininism had been defeated by femininity; 
the lure of the golden cup had proved too strong, 
and the Berlin Boycott League was no more ! 

But before Emma had more than time to grasp 
this amazing, this appalling fact, she received yet 
another shock. For scarcely had the delicate scent 
of the women’s passing vanished when two more 
guests appeared, this time a man and a girl. The 
man, Emma observed, was in the dress uniform 
of the Berlin Black Watch and there was some- 
thing familiar about the girl. She thought per- 
haps it was the way her hair came down on her 
forehead in a widow’s peak; then all in a moment, 
with a pang like a sword stroke, she realized the 
truth. The approaching figures that leaned so 
tenderly toward each other and talked so low were 
Sigart, the Grafin von Hesse-Schwerin and her 
soldierly fiance, the Burgraf u Graf zu Dohna- 
Findenstein I 

This evidence of treachery on the part of her 
hostess and much trusted friend, completely de- 
molished Emma’s fortitude and with a little moan 
she literally fell back into Kimberley’s arms. 


288 


The Great Plan 


“Take me away!’’ she wailed, “take me 
away! ” 

Nothing loath, Kimberley obeyed and they hur- 
ried back to the car, Emma leaning upon his arm 
with entire dependence. Once broken in spirit 
she was as clinging as the most feminine of women. 

“17 Dorotheenstrasse,” Kimberley said to the 
chauffeur, helping Emma in, and in another minute 
they were speeding back to Berlin. It was a long 
trip and rain had set in. Emma was very miser- 
able, and her father’s old friend, her “ Cousin 
Adrian,” was so kind and good to her she could not 
help huddling close to him for comfort. Perhaps 
she even let him hold her hand — she did not know 
or care. But the man knew, and what is more he 
cared. Her proximity and the warmth and safety 
of the limousine in contrast to the rainy night, and 
the sense of her dependence upon him in this mo- 
ment of supreme disappointment — all were in- 
toxicating, and by the time they reached the 
Dorotheenstrasse he knew that he could not live 
another night without knowing whether or not she 
would marry him. 

There was a light burning in the hall, they 
found, when he had opened the door with Emma’s 


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289 


latch-key, after telling the chauffeur to wait, and 
there was another burning over the mantle in the 
big drawing-room. 

“ Good night,” said Emma wearily, as he hesi- 
tated, “ and thank you very much for — ” But 
he interrupted her. 

“ Come in here a minute,” he said, “ I ’ve some- 
thing I want to ask you.” Too tired and spirit- 
less to demur, or even wonder at the request, she 
followed him and when they were standing in the 
big dim room before the hearth she said, “ Well? ” 

He was staring at her steadily and there was 
something different and unfamiliar about his look 
that in spite of herself aroused her torpid faculties. 
“ Well? ” she repeated, almost anxiously, and had 
a premonitory sinking of the heart as if a terri- 
ble catastrophe were about to happen. Then he 
answered her quickly. 

“ You must marry me,” he said. She stepped 
back to the mantel-piece and leaned against it, her 
hands flat against the travertine marble. 

“ Oh, Cousin Adrian! ” she gasped. Now she 
knew what the catastrophe was, she was about to 
lose one of her best friends. 

“ You must,” he repeated, confronting her 


290 


The Great Plan 


again. “ I Ve loved you a long while, I must 
have you.” His “ must ” almost terrified her, in 
the demoralized state of her nerves, the result of 
the evening’s blow to her ambitions. 

“No I No I No I ” she cried, “ I can’t I ” and 
thrust out her hands before her face. The ges- 
ture stopped him. Was it possible he was repel- 
lent to her? He flushed scarlet with pain. 

She saw the look, and suddenly pity for him 
overwhelmed her as it had on that other day, not 
many weeks ago, when he and she had been riding 
in the Odenwald. She stepped quickly to his side 
and impulsively laid a hand on his arm. 

“ Don’t look so sorry,” she said; “ it makes me 
feel sorry, too I ” She looked up pleadingly into 
his dark, unhappy face. Foolish Emma : that was 
no way to calm the turbulence of his feelings, that 
look, that voice, were lighted matches to the flame 
of his longing. 

He gave a glad cry and seized her. “ You do 
love me ! You do ! ” he cried and tried to kiss 
her, but she thwarted him, with one indignant 
push, and freed herself from his arms. 

You miserable man ! ” she exclaimed in rage 
and surprise, for all the world as if Kimberley 


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291 


were a stranger to her, “ how dare you try to 
kiss me when you know — ” She stopped. The 
thought she had had in her mind was “ When you 
know that Graham Horde is the only man I want 
to have kiss me,” but the words failed her because 
she suddenly remembered that Graham Horde 
was no longer hers to kiss. He stared at her, 
puzzled and rebuffed but not quite beaten. 

“You’re not going to marry me, then?” he 
said. Miss Daingerfield’s eyes, which had been 
filling with tears at thought of her lost lover, now 
sparkled again with anger and amazement. It 
was astonishing what notions men got into their 
heads ! 

“ Marry you? ” she repeated. “ Why, Cousin 
Adrian, you ’re forty-nine years old! ” And with 
one long scornful, indignant look at him she left 
the room and began the ascent of the stairs. 

And it was that one speech, showing him plainly 
how great she considered the difference in their 
ages, which tore away the remnants of his illusion, 
and he saw that he had been mistaken from the 
first to the last and that she had never cared, nor 
ever would. He sat suddenly on an ottoman, 
and covered his face with his beautiful strong 


292 


The Great Plan 


hands that had no beauty In the eyes of the one 
woman In the world about whom he cared. 

Adrian Kimberley, for all his greater age was 
not a man to be despised, for he was well bred and 
finely educated, and he had besides the quality 
Emma most admired, bravery. His love of ad- 
venture throughout all his life proved that, for 
surely it took a man of courage to cross the red 
Nekko bridge in Japan, forbidden to foreigners 
on pain of death, as he had done when he was 
twenty, and it took bravery and unselfishness to 
nurse two natives sick with yellow fever until help 
came, as he had done on a certain trip down the 
Magdalena River not so long ago, and besides that 
he knew the most interesting people in every quar- 
ter of the globe, and was well aware of the most 
fascinating ways of spending an enormous fortune. 
The difficulty he had had in believing that Emma 
would refuse him is, for these reasons, easier to 
understand. 

Poor fellow, one feels sorry for him as he sits 
there with the fragments of his castle in the air 
about him, and his head in his hands, for the pity 
of it was, that if he had only been so inclined he 
might very well, with these attractions, have found 


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293 


some noble, splendid woman nearer his own age 
to love him. One who would have been able to 
appreciate his really wonderful charm and the 
sweetness of character that lay behind his moodi- 
ness; who would have loved to stroke his hair 
and laugh his melancholy away, and welcome the 
chance to exercise her womanliness in humoring 
his waywardness and taming the wild hawk that 
was in him. But this was not to be, for the vision 
of youth that Emma embodied so exquisitely had 
obsessed his good sense and blinded his judgment. 

He rose after a while when he had been silent 
for some time, and leaving the house, went out to 
the motor which waited at the curb. “We ’ll go 
back to the hotel,” he said to his chauffeur. “ I ’ll 
pick up my man and my luggage. I have to go 
to Paris tonight.” And he stepped into the ma- 
chine and sped rapidly away down the Dorotheen- 
strasse and out of Emma’s life; while Emma, up- 
stairs In the room she occupied In the Grafin SI- 
gart’s house, lay on the great bed and sobbed 
“ Graham ! Graham I ” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


ARLY the next morning, before 
the household was stirring, 
Emma arose and packing her 
things herself, sent the footman 
for a taxi. The need of Juliet 
was strong upon her, and she decided to return at 
once to Niedenfels without seeing or speaking to 
the traitor SIgart, whom at an early hour In the 
morning she had heard arriving from the ball. A 
note to the young countess’s mother, expressing re- 
gret that an emergency made her guest’s early de- 
parture necessary, was left in care of the footman, 
and Emma hurried to the depot. 

The journey to Cologne was passed at last; 
how, she did not quite know, except that It was 
filled with an ever Increasing longing for the quiet 
old castle on the Rhine and the sympathetic minis- 
trations of Juliet. As the train drew In to the 
big depot, and she saw the motor for which she 
had telegraphed her chauffeur, waiting for her, 
294 



The Great Plan 


295 


this feeling grew into a passion. Yes, Juliet 
would comfort her, Juliet would sympathize with 
her, she thought, and with her dear friend’s arms 
about her, the heavy feeling in her heart which 
had been growing ever since the defection of her 
lover, and which the wreck of her plans for pro- 
moting the cause of suffrage in Germany had in- 
creased to an almost unbearable point, would 
surely lessen. Tears filled her eyes as she stepped 
into the car and gave the word “ home I ” 

The day was a glorious one and here and there 
the road gave glimpses of the Rhine sparkling and 
dancing down in the bosom of the valley. Violets 
grew everywhere, and flowering grapevines filled 
the air with sweetness. At last the castle with its 
familiar octagonal towers came into view, the ma- 
chine swiftly climbed the last ascent and stood 
pulsing before the moat. 

Emma looked across at the raised drawbridge 
in surprise. Where was Heinrich? They might 
have been expecting her when she had taken the 
trouble to telegraph. But she had not more than 
time to make this reflection before she saw the old 
man running across the court, and in another mo- 
ment the drawbridge was lowered and the port- 


296 


The Great Plan 


cullis raised. Emma remembered as they passed 
between the little towers of the gate how Graham 
had flung himself against the fifteenth-century iron 
grating on that afternoon so long ago when they 
had caught him in his disguise as Frau von Eber- 
hart. 

She compressed her lips, as she got out of the 
machine, and shook her head. That was no way 
to carry out her newly formed resolution not to 
allow herself to think of Horde. She must not 
let so much as a reminiscence about him cross her 
mind, for she had sent him away of her own free 
will and must try to learn to live without him. 
The Schlosshof was empty, and though the door 
of the castle stood open there were no signs of 
Juliet. Impatient at her non-appearance Emma 
crossed the court with rapid steps and met Tilly 
coming out. 

An unusual solemnity about the hearty, merry- 
faced old German woman warned Emma that 
something unusual had occurred and, prepared 
for the worst by her recent experiences, she asked 
with an unnatural calm if her friend were “ still 
living.” 

“ Ach, yes, she lives! ” Tilly replied in haste, 


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297 


‘‘but — ’’ She paused. “But what'?” enquired 
Miss Daingerfield shortly, her patience giving 
way. Tilly said nothing but after much fumbling 
about her person, handed out a thick envelope. 
“ Fraulein Simms haf told me that I should give 
you this when you return,” she said. 

Emma snatched the paper and began to devour 
its contents. It was Indeed from Juliet and after 
pages of explanation of how It had all come about, 
and wild and tearful protestations of affection, 
contained the startling Intelligence that Miss 
Simms had the week before run away and married 
Jim Holyoke, the pseudo “ Count Palatine of the 
Rhine,” Graham Horde’s friend, and that her 
future address was “ Lelpsig.” 

Emma had received many shocks In the past few 
days but none that surprised her more. What, 
Juliet eloping? Juliet gone from the castle, Juliet 
deserting her, too? It seemed as If the whole 
world was in a league to deprive her of her 
friends. First Graham, next SIgart, then Adrian, 
and now this friend whom she had counted on 
most of all, her partner In the Great Plan! It 
was too much 1 A very paroxysm of anger against 
fate seized Emma. 


298 


The Great Plan 


She rushed out into the courtyard where the 
chauffeur was bending over his machine in the 
bright sunlight, and commanded him peremptor- 
ily to make ready for a trip back to the railroad 
station. Then she went indoors again and gave 
quick orders to Tilly and her daughter, relative to 
the Immediate closing of the castle, and the dlspo- 
sion of the automobile which she wanted freighted 
to the nearest shipping port on Its return from 
Cologne. The chauffeur would help them about 
that, she told the astonished women who were not 
used to such quick action, and gave them a large 
check with which to pay their own wages and those 
of the chauffeur and old Heinrich. They were 
further Instructed to pay any bills for household 
expenses that might be outstanding, not to men- 
tion the cost Incident to the carrying out of her 
orders. Her next move was to fly to the tele- 
phone and send a telegram to the North German 
Lloyd Steamship office at Bremen, to reserve a 
stateroom on the next steamer sailing for the 
United States, and In one hour’s time had finished 
packing her effects and was at the door again wait- 
ing for the automobile. 

“ Bring me a pot of black paint, and a great 


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299 


sheet of wrapping paper and a hammer and nails,” 
she commanded the bewildered Tilly, who was al- 
most frightened by her mistress’s high color and 
quick, excited way of speaking. The good frau 
told her there was no black paint, but Emma, 
stamping her foot, told her to “ bring shoe-black- 
ing then.” And when this peculiar request had 
been obeyed she seized the brush, dripping with 
the inky liquid, and began to daub the wrapping 
paper with writing in rapid, broad strokes. The 
Inscription finished, read, “ FOR SALE, RE- 
STORED AND FURNISHED RHINE CAS- 
TLE, CHEAP.” 

With It In her hand she ran to that angle of the 
castle, Juliet’s little chapel, which was most con- 
spicuous from the river, and with the wind blow- 
ing her bright hair and her skirts about, she 
climbed up on a chair Tilly brought her, and nailed 
the Improvised sign to a window-casing with 
savage blows of her hammer. Then jump- 
ing down, she bade a brief good-by to the two 
women and old Heinrich, and getting into the 
automobile, was whirled away down the road with- 
out as much as one backward glance at the red 
sandstone stronghold of the medieval prince’s 


300 


The Great Plan 


palatine, called Niedenfels, which had so lately 
been her home — headquarters for the once 
flourishing Suffrage Emigration Society. 

The ride to Bremen was a dismal one, for when 
her indignation had subsided Emma felt singularly 
depressed. To be sure she was going back to her 
own country, and that thought comforted her a 
little, but she dreaded the possible over-night wait 
for a boat at Bremen, and the prospect of a lonely 
ocean voyage by herself. She had never before 
traveled alone. Always she had had people with 
her — nice, gay, familiar people who were ready 
to do anything in the world for her. She should 
have had them with her now — it was unfair that 
she didn’t. Where were they all — Graham, 
and “ Cousin Adrian,” Sigart, and Juliet? Why 
weren’t they with her? Tears of self-pity filled 
her eyes. But at last, after many weary hours 
passed in this sort of useless cogitation, the train 
arrived at Bremen. 

She looked eagerly out of the window of her 
compartment as it came slowly to a standstill, be- 
cause she could not help having a wild hope that 
through some miracle Graham would know of her 
arrival and be there to meet her. Oh, if he only 


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301 


were — if he would only forgive her, only come 
and take care of her I 

She searched the faces on the platform anx- 
iously, and suddenly, marvelously enough, saw a 
familiar one. But it was not Graham’s. Instead 
of his long, loosely-knit figure and beaming smile 
she saw a tall gentleman with gray hair and black 
Vandyke beard coming down the platform toward 
her, looking in every compartment as he passed. 
Emma fairly hurled her baggage at the porter who 
opened the door for her, and leaped out. 

“ Father! ” she shrieked. 

When she had at last been persuaded to unclasp 
her hands from Mr. Daingerfield’s neck and she 
and that jovial gentleman were in a cab and safely 
on their way to his hotel through the crowded 
streets of the seaport town, many explanations en- 
sued between father and daughter. 

Mr. Daingerfield in the first place explained his 
presence, saying that he had always Intended to 
come over and see how she was getting on when 
she had been long enough away from home, and 
that if the Great Plan was her experiment, letting 
her try It out was his; also that he had landed only 
that morning and was at the moment of Emma’s 


302 


The Great Plan 


arrival on the point of taking a train for Cologne 
when their meeting had providentially prevented 
him. When he had finished his story and in reply 
to his tender, “ Well, now, what have they been 
doing to my Emma-girl?” she told him between 
sobs and with her head on his shoulder, of every- 
thing that had happened during the past month 
except Adrian Kimberley’s proposal, — which 
motives of delicacy made her wish to conceal, — 
with a full account of the failure of the Great 
Plan and its Berlin phase, the boycott. 

I wanted so to help I ” she sobbed, ‘‘ and now 
the cause will just have to go on without me I ” 

He patted her shoulder. “ Never mind, 
honey,” he said, “ you tried and that ’s the best 
most of us can do. And if this suffrage business 
is right why women will get the vote soon enough 
whether you help them or not.” 

She gulped down a sob. “ But it was the wish 
of my heart — the Great Plan!” she protested 
piteously. Her father stroked her head sympa- 
thetically. It always moved him when his spoiled 
darling said anything was the wish of her heart, 
but he spoke firmly. 

“ Are you sure it was? ” he asked. “ Because, 


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303 


you know, my little girl,” his voice grew very ten- 
der, “ speaking about great plans, in the opinion 
of your poor old dad, the greatest plan in the 
world, the only plan that can make a woman 
happy is — is — ” He stopped. 

“ Is what? ” murmured Emma. 

“ Is getting married to some nice young chap 
who loves her,” said Robert Daingerfield. 

His daughter made no reply to that, so he 
added softly, “ perhaps after all you did n’t under- 
stand yourself. Perhaps, instead of revolution- 
izing the world, the wish of your heart was to — ” 
He finished the sentence with a kiss. 

A long silence fell between them. Then Emma 
spoke in a queer, subdued little voice. 

“ Have you seen Graham? ” she said. At that 
her strangely behaved father pushed away from 
her, and with an entire change of manner said 
briskly: “ Have I seen Graham? What do you 
want to know for? I thought you told me you 
never wanted to hear his name again? ” 

Emma sighed. “ So I did,” she said. 

It was fortunate for a little scheme that Mr. 
Daingerfield had, that his daughter did not look 
up at that moment and catch him smiling quiz- 


304 


The Great Plan 


zically down at the top of her head which was 
again snuggling to his shoulder. 

“ Then it can’t Interest you,” said her father, 
“ to know that I have seen him.” He smiled still 
more broadly at Emma’s sudden start. “ Horde 
met me when I landed — I cabled him, you know 
— and told me that he was himself sailing very 
shortly for home.” Emma flushed with sudden 
excitement. Then Graham was In the same town 
with her; perhaps she would see him! 

“ Did he mention me? ” she asked hopefully. 

‘‘Oh, dear, no I” said Mr. Daingerfield with 
what was surely needless mendacity, for the fact 
was that Graham had spent fully an hour telling 
her father, with whom he had always been great 
friends, how Emma had thrown him over, but that 
he still cared and had kept track of her motions 
since the parting by subsidizing Tilly and a servant 
of the Grafin SIgart’s, and that It was through a 
telegram of Frau Bloem’s that he had learned of 
Emma’s sudden determination to sail for home and 
had been able to tell Mr, Daingerfield what train 
to meet. 

“ We only talked business,” continued Emma’s 
perfidious parent. 


The Great Plan 


305 


“ Business? ” repeated the girl feebly. 

“ Yes, you see that boy’s father was one of my 
oldest and best friends, as you know, and I ’ve al- 
ways meant to do something for him, but I thought 
I ’d wait until I saw that he meant to do something 
for himself, and taking that job as a newspaper 
reporter proved to me that he did — ” He 
stopped. 

“Yes?” said Emma, looking up. She felt 
somehow, that there was more to come. 

“ Well,” Mr. Daingerfield continued, “ when 
I decided that the time had arrived for me to come 
over and see how my little girl was getting on, I 
thought the time had also arrived to make her 
young man my offer.” 

“And did you?” interrupted Emma breath- 
lessly. 

“ Yes, I told him when I first saw him that a 
position with a good salary attached was waiting 
for him in my lumber mills.” He paused again. 
For some reason the story did not seem to go very 
fast. 

“And what did he say?” enquired Emma 
eagerly. 

“ He said,” replied Mr. Daingerfield, and now 


3o6 


The Great Plan 


his voice was rather grave, “ that he was n’t your 
young man any longer and that if I was doing it 
on that account he could n’t accept.” 

A perturbed “ Oh-h! ” escaped Emma. ‘‘ But 
you told him, did n’t you, that — ” she began. 

Yes,” Mr. Daingerfield took her up, “ I did 
tell him. I said that was n’t the only reason, and 
that he was my old friend’s boy and that I — I 
loved him like a — like a — ” This time he came 
to a full halt. His daughter looked up in alarm. 
“ Go on,” she urged, “ and what did Graham say 
to that? ” 

“ He would n’t believe me,” Mr. Daingerfield 
replied gently, and in an instant added more cheer- 
fully, in a rallying tone, “ But what is it to you? 
You need n’t mind what he does. You hate him, 
you know. Because the big brute would n’t take 
the Great Plan seriously! ” 

Emma shivered. “ That ’s so,” she said faintly 
and lay still against her father’s breast. “ Oh 
Heavens,” she thought, “ Graham refusing to 
accept that fine offer made in good faith, just on 
my account 1 ” It was too dreadful I Oh, for 
strength to swallow her pride and tell her father 
that it was all a mistake. That she did n’t hate 


The Great Plan 


307 


Graham I That she loved him with all her heart, 
that she was the most wretched, miserable — ” 

The carriage stopped and they got out at the 
hotel. It was too late. The opportunity for con- 
fidences of that kind was past, for they were to 
sail, her father told her, that afternoon at five, 
and there was much to be done in the little time 
that remained. At the steamer it was the same 
thing; the thought of sailing without seeing 
Graham grew more and more intolerable. She 
hung back on the gangway, her heart like lead, 
trying to get up courage to tell Mr. Daingerfield 
of her longing and beg him to find the young man 
for her, but prevented by shame. Then — in the 
midst of the confusion attendant upon the depar- 
ture of a great ship and the crowds of arriving 
passengers — standing a little to one side of the 
top of the gangway with his bulging portmanteau 
beside him — suddenly she saw Graham Horde. 

Her feet could not go fast enough and she fairly 
flew up the gangplank. “Graham I” she cried, 
“ Dear Graham I ” He saw her and started to 
meet her, and in a moment had her in his arms. 

Grinning stewards and interested passengers 
paused a moment to take in the scene — the tall. 


NOV 26 1913 


308 The Great Plan 

good-looking fellow and the little, slender girl 
standing with their arms around each other, 
and near by an older man with gray hair and 
dark pointed beard who looked on and gleefully 
rubbed his hands — and then went their mundane 
way again. 

“ Greggy,” said Emma an instant later, draw- 
ing back a little, though Horde still held her 
hands, “ do you really forgive me, really like me 
again? ’’ 

Graham screwed up his handsome eyes and 
screwed up his handsome nose and laughed a great 
boyish, triumphant laugh for all the world to hear. 

‘‘ Like you? ” he echoed. ‘‘ Why, Savage — ** 

He paused and his face suddenly sobered U 
tenderness. Bending down close to her ear he 
said — 

But I ’m not going to tell you what he said I 
What’s the use? Those of you who haven’t 
heard it as yet, have dreamed it, so you all know ! 

THE END 

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